


A von Aegir's Guide to Etiquette for the Recently Betrothed

by Vellev



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Ballroom Dancing, Courting Rituals, Eventual Smut, Facial Shaving, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Intrigue, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Hubert von Vestra, Pining, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 67,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24692752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vellev/pseuds/Vellev
Summary: When Hubert agrees to a political marriage with an unknown Alliance diplomat, Ferdinand steps up as the noblest of nobles to teach him to be a suitable romantic partner.Featuring: where duty ends and life begins, the exact degree to which a pinky must be held when drinking tea, and so, so much more horseback riding than Hubert would like.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 225
Kudos: 325





	1. Great Tree Moon, Week 1, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am so excited to start out this new project! I have so many things planned for you. As always, a huge thank you to my wonderful beta, [GuiltyBystanders!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyBystanders/pseuds/GuiltyBystanders).

Most anything of importance that happened in his life happened in the discomfort of Edelgard’s childhood bedroom in the castle at Enbarr. 

Hubert recalls spending more time in this room that he had in his own quarters in those childhood years. In this very room, he had made his boyish headquarters for a full three years while trying to convince his father to let him follow his lady to Fhirdiad. It was here that he’d lost faith in his father altogether. Here that he tried to make a blueprint of the castle, recording each secret passage he had found. It was in the room on the other side of this wall that his father had slapped him across the face after his escape, told him that there was nowhere he could go where his spies did not have eyes. He’d spent months sleeping on the floor of her bedroom, not daring to touch his lady’s bed. He had ignored his twelfth birthday here, alone, pouring over a book on human anatomy. He had tasted coffee for the first time in this room, brewed it himself with a potions kit. He’d designed ciphers at that desk, he’d learned how to make messages invisible, learned how to carve sigils into stone with a knife. It was at that desk that he’d learned how to cast his first spell. 

It was to this room that he spoke to Edelgard privately for the first time after her return, so soon after her twelfth birthday. Here that she had told him that not all of her time was spent in Fhirdiad, but somewhere deep down in this very castle, below his feet. Here, she had told him why none of her siblings had returned.

This room, where they were standing right now, was where Edelgard first asked him if he’d kill for her.

She had been sitting at her desk like so, a book of poisons set out in front of her. He stood to her side, refusing to sit, and she had looked directly up at him, and asked him. 

_”If you were to administer the poison yourself, it would be like taking a life.”_

_“I am prepared to take more than lives, Lady Edelgard. And I doubt poison is the worst way I will do it.”_

_“You cannot untake a life. Once this is done, Hubert, there won’t be any going back.”_

_“You can’t seriously think that no blood will be spoiled in this — we’re talking about a war, Lady Edelgard. No one’s hands will be clean when we see a new Fodlan, least of all my own.”_

A poisoned soup. A dead body. It had been simple, then, he thinks, even in the turmoil of his sixteen-year-old mind.

But now, though they stood in the same spots, in the same very room, speaking such similar words, this conversation was somehow earned more discussion than taking a life. Some of it can be chalked up to the decade of friendship, some just to the unprecedented topic.

“You can’t get unmarried, Hubert. If you agree to this, you can’t go back. ” 

“If everything goes according to plan, I won’t need to.”

Edelgard shakes her head at him, and he watches the tassels on her crown swing. “This isn’t a plan. It’s not something you can plan every aspect of, there’s no expected outcome other than—”

“A child? Another chance at peace with the defanged Alliance? Don’t underestimate me, your majesty. I will always find a way to make a plan.”

He suspects that the differences between their two opinions stem from the strange woman sitting a few feet away from them. The professor’s eyes are back to a cold blue now, but still too large and unsettling. She had always looked something not quite human, and now they knew why. Yet even with the professors monstrous condition reversed, there is something truly alien about her. She didn’t say anything to them, just watched, her ring dazzling where it sat on Edelgard’s finger. With her influence, of course, her Majesty spoke of marriage as a sacrament rather than just another political tool in their arsenal.

“I’m not making you do this, Hubert. I’m not ordering you to do this.”

“But I intend on doing this all the same.” He lifts his sparse eyebrows for emphasis. 

A marriage to someone with social standing in the Alliance would do them a world of good. 

It wouldn’t fix all their problems, not in the slightest, but it would be a sign of good faith between the Empire and the new vassal state. Politics had never been Hubert’s strongest suit, and while he would have much rather cut down the commanders of the Alliance, this was the conclusion the Emperor, Prime Minister, Minister of Military Affairs, and their strange former professor had come to. The Alliance would be allowed to self-govern to some degree under the Empire’s supervision. Edelgard has stolen every bit of the late mad king’s territory in Faerghus, of course, and while Hubert still thinks it would be easier to just rule all of Fodlan, Edelgard spoke of how a vassal state had its benefits. The Empire’s relationship with Brigid was successful still, so why not try, try again?

So this marriage proposal was a positive, Hubert convinced himself. An Empire elite with an Alliance elite. Simple. Tactical. Not bogged down by any petty emotions. Better than marriage sounded normally. 

“It’s very likely that the Alliance Roundtable will choose an acquaintance from our school days. I could ask someone who hadn’t attended the Officers Academy to avoid any sour memories. I’ve already spoken to all of our commanders, but if it wasn’t a noble, perhaps that might even be better. A clear example of our new society and its ideals.” Edelgard makes sense, because of course she does, but the way that the former professor gives her a little nod makes Hubert suspicious.

“The Alliance Roundtable would not want to marry off one of their children to a commoner. They will take it as an insult, and we’ll have a completely different sort of issue on our hands.” He puts a gloved palm down on her desk. His voice is a little quieter this time. He doesn’t quite like the idea of this professor being able to listen in, though he knows she always can. A better spy than any, that one. She always seemed to know the private conversations others had. Intimate details about relationships, pasts, things she had no reason to be privy to. “Just let me do this. You asked me for a reason, I’m sure. Were you not prepared for me to say yes?”

“I should have been more prepared for you to say yes. I asked everyone, with different reasons for each. I hadn’t expected that you would be the most excited for it.” Edelgard massages her temples. “Fine. It’ll be you. I will inform the Alliance that I have made my choice, and inquire if they have made theirs.” 

“Good.” He lifts his hand from the table, curling it into a fist. “You know that I’m capable of this. The amount of investigation I’ll be able to do within the Alliance, Lady Edelgard. Think of it. The weasels wearing the skins of Alliance nobles we could drive out.” 

Edelgard stands up, a sign that the conversation is near over. “I know that you’re capable of this, Hubert. I just don’t know if it’s going to be good for you.”

“What of our work has ever been good for me?”

“Hubert,” she says, and unfortunately, concern tinges her voice. Edelgard stops where she stands, and twists on her heel to speak directly to him. “I acknowledge the sacrifices that you’ve made in this war. You more than most. I regret that they needed to be made, but I do know‚and I expect you to agree with me—that each and every one was necessary. This one, quite honestly, is not.”

“Not necessary, perhaps. But an opportunity. The Roundtable is offering us intel on a silver platter.”

“And there are dozens of others who could easily pass that intel onto you.”

“Dozens who could, but not me. I could spend hours longer each day reading reports on what our dear newlywed is keeping up to, or I could see it for myself.” A dirty tactic, maybe, but he’s never been above those. Weaponizing the sleepless nights she knows he spends pouring over letters and reports, sending correspondence to those in distant reaches of the new Empire. “I will accomplish this, your majesty. The wedding, I will… conquer it. Despite the parades, our war is not yet over.”

Edelgard frowns and walks towards the former professor and puts a hand on her shoulder. It’s as good as showing Hubert where the door is. “I said I would inform them, Hubert.”

He stands, giving her a short bow before making his way out of the room.

“Hubert.” He turns back around, eyes on her where she sits down at the small table a few steps away from her bed. The table is a new addition, post-war— it hadn’t been with them throughout all those years. Edelgard sits across from Byleth, and Hubert does not turn his head away when he sees their hands meet. “Don’t go telling anyone about this, yes? Not until I’ve finished the negotiations.”

“Yes, your majesty. Of course.” He shuts the door behind him.

* * *

He remembers sitting at his younger sister’s betrothal feast, overwhelmingly happy that he was born without a crest. At only six years old himself, his shoes don’t touch the ground under the table, and one of his hands—not yet darkened by repeated use of Reason, but the innocent frail hand of a child—grips his mother’s skirt tightly, under the table. She had assured him multiple times before the party that an arranged marriage was not something to mourn, but to celebrate. 

His mother had told him that an arranged marriage was, in fact, a good thing. That there were hundreds of stories of men and women who met each other naturally and fell madly in love, but by the time they were married, there was no more falling in love to be done and the passion fizzled. She told him that his sister, young and small and engaged as she was, would now have a lifetime ahead of her to fall in love with the young master Boramas. 

He had sat at the feast, an array of food that did not agree with his childish preferences—food his infant sister could not eat at all—in front of him, and so instead looked up at his mother. Her hair was clipped short, how he would one day wear his. His sister inherited their mother’s dark green hair, but, to his father’s delight, Hubert’s hair was as black and curly as his own. Though they did not know it then with his baby face, he would inherit more of his mother’s traits—her height, her slim and tall physique, her sharp features. He would even inherit her mannerisms, to some degree, her distrust of others. Someday, long, long in the future, he would learn that he inherited her curiosity. The same desire to uncover the truth of Fodlan’s bloody history that had inevitably killed her. 

He had looked up at her and thought many things. He thought of crests, he thought or marriage, he thought of duty. He’d sworn his life away to one of the daughters of the Emperor only months ago, and now his sister is swearing away a life she’s barely conscious of to some count’s son.

At that point in time, his parents had seemed happy. 

He has vague memories of his mother loving his father. They would sit in the castle gardens together, speaking words he couldn’t hear. Sometimes, while his mother would do his sister’s hair while sat by the fire, his father would come back from his duties, press a kiss against his mother’s temple. 

At this dinner, they were happy, laughing at each other across the table, feeding each other bits of fruit and meats. His sister, so small sitting in their father’s lap, was smiling at the festivities around her and drinking in the attention given to her on her special day. As an adult, Hubert almost wishes that they had a picture commissioned of them at that time, merely to have a physical representation of the lies his family was built on. 

For, in but a short couple of years, his mother and sister would fall at the hands of an assassin he would never find. His father would grow closer and closer to a fiend dressed in human skin, and the one person Hubert was intended to protect—no doubt the one reason why they kept him alive while his mother and sister perished—was stolen from him.

* * *

“So, an arranged marriage, hm? I knew it was coming.” Dorothea must have gained more muscle after the war than during it, judging by the vice-like grip she has on Hubert’s arm. 

She captured him in the shopping district and is currently holding him hostage in a cafe, using his money to pay for her cake and lemonade. Years ago, he would have merely shaken himself from her hold, but he has the time for frivolities these days, he supposes. Somewhere, in all of this, out of all of his busy schedule, there’s space for cake and coffee with a friend from school. Look at him, growing soft. Pathetic, this is how he’ll end up dead. He doubts this cake is poisoned, though, so he lets her proceed. “Did you, now?”

“It was bound to happen. The only thing more permanent in life other than death is marriage.” Dorothea had returned to Enbarr after the war’s end and began to sing at Mittlefrank once more. From what Hubert had heard, their company was doing fairly successfully, all things considered. He supposes that the end of the war did boost the economy, and what more to do with a few extra dollars than see a diva shrilly sing her lungs out on stage?

“Is that so? I think you’ll find death is more permanent by quite a large margin.”

“Oh, always so grim, Hubie!” She cuts her slice of cake with the side of her fork in her left hand and then switches it to the right to eat. “Imagine, for a moment. The Alliance-Empire political marriage ending in divorce! I doubt the Alliance would be pleased with that one.”

“Ah, I suppose that’s true.” Hubert had thought that now, with that inhuman beast leading the church gone, divorce is a little more accepted. Dorothea seems to forget that he could always just kill his future wife, but he’ll entertain the idea. 

“Yes, yes, whoever agrees to the marriage is going to have to be in it for, aha, how would you say it? _‘Til death do us part?_ ” 

Hubert doesn’t really think he’d say it like that, but silently drinks a sip of coffee. At least Dorothea had ordered that for him when she’d steamrolled through him to the waiter. He doesn’t know if he could bear having to suffer through the slice of cake she’d ordered for him with some overly sweet beverage that would stick to his teeth. “I take it that means you rejected Lady Edelgard’s proposal?”

“Me? Oh, yes. That sort of stuff isn’t for me anymore.” 

If Hubert was less trained, he might have not been able to disguise his look of surprise. “Really? I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Don’t get me wrong, having a rich hubby would be great and all, but. With my veteran’s check from the war, I’m not doing too shabby on cash, and the Company needs me. I can’t just up and leave them to go Alliance territory.” She looks happy when she talks, and Hubert realizes that she probably is. Coming to this conclusion, not to marry the first powerful noble offered to her, must have been a proud moment for her. 

Hubert doesn’t really know what to say. “And here I thought you’d be jumping at the opportunity to be married off to a noble.”

“Not anymore. I do have some standards, Hubie.” She repositions herself in her seat, crossing her legs the other way. “I think, after the war, I realized that life is a good deal longer than I thought it was. I didn’t survive the battlefield just to waste away the minute I get my first wrinkle. Why spend it with someone that I don’t enjoy?” 

Hubert looks down at the cake in front of him. It’s lemon-flavored, and his fork stabs easily into it before he takes a bite. He already feels a headache coming on—why would anyone ever make anything this sweet? He makes a face. “So, then. Tell me, Songstress Arnault, what are you doing here sitting with me in a cafe?”

She looks at him a moment and then cracks a laugh, large and performative. He rolls his eyes as people turn to look at the person so loud in the relative quiet of the cafe. She tips her head forward from where she’s tilted it back for the howling. “Oh, Hubie. You’re a fun one, that’s why. What reason do I need other than that?”

He frowns. Dorothea’s method of manipulation wasn’t his favorite, but all too often he gets caught in her web merely because it was too much work to try and escape it. He takes another miserable bite of lemon cake. 

“Don’t pull that face.” One of her hands goes out to touch his own, fingers against his glove. “And don’t—your manners are atrocious. How do you manage to scrape your fork on your plate every single time?” 

He places his fork down on his plate and crosses his arms. Sighs. “And here I thought I was being polite, eating something that wasn’t to my tastes.”

“That’s not polite, that’s common decency.” He winces as he takes another sip of coffee. “What you’re doing, well, I’m surprised you never got kicked out of the castle with manners like that. Don’t nobles teach their children etiquette?”

“Entirely slipped my education. I must have been too busy learning torture techniques,” he attempts to deadpan. He knew there were etiquette lessons, of course, he’d bring Edelgard to them every few days. But when she was in class, he would be obediently studying other important skills; biology, deception, murder. He hadn’t the time or patience for classes teaching him which fork use first at a dinner—it was much more worthwhile to learn what knife to use for an assassination. “Where did you learn your manners?” 

“Well, it’s an important thing to know, isn’t it? For a young girl trying to make it in life?” She gives him a pouting look, trying to make her eyes look bigger. 

He just gives her a pointed look, what some might call a glare. 

She frowns, defeated. “Manuela, mostly. In school, once he heard my plan, Ferdie helped me a bit too, actually. A rigorous teacher he was. I still don’t do half the things he asked of me, and regretted reaching out less than a month after I asked.” 

“That bad, was it?”

“Miserable. Talking to that boy about the proper way to stroll almost made me happy I wasn’t born a noble.” She shoots him a smile that Hubert likes. Dark, painful, a little dangerous. “Almost.”

“The proper way to stroll?” Hubert can’t help but let out a little laugh at that. “There’s a proper way to stroll?”

“Oh, don’t get him started with that one. You will never hear the end of it,” she says and sets down her fork. His expression is teasing, as it often was describing the little ways she bullied Ferdinand during their school days. But Hubert can detect a little bit of discomfort there, some gentle vexation. She gives a little cough and changes the topic of conversation. Interesting. “So, who do you think it’ll be? Edelgard told me she asked basically all of the Black Eagle Strike Force. I can’t imagine Linhardt agreeing, though. Bernie’s definitely not the type. Ah, she definitely didn’t even ask Petra. Ferdinand or Caspar, maybe?” 

Ah. He wasn’t to tell anyone that he and Edelgard had already made arrangements until the negotiations were complete. He’ll have to keep his mouth shut. “I believe Caspar is currently in the former Gautier territory, handling something with Sreng.” The hot-headed man made a good Minister of Military Affairs, Hubert thought, even if he was a little too likely to go to the battlegrounds himself. Well, as long as it wasn’t hurting anybody. Rather, not hurting anybody he wasn’t supposed to be hurting, but… he trusted Caspar to not make too many mistakes. 

“Ferdie, then? Do you think he’ll do it? I don’t think he’s the type.” 

Hubert leans forward to her conspiratorially, weaving his fingers together and resting his chin on a gloved hand. “I will have you know, I did not decline Her Majesty’s offer.”

“You?”

“Me.” 

“I would have thought that you had better things to do,” Dorothea says, a look of disbelief painting her face. She had been in the process of picking her fork up, but now it hovers in her hand, some centimeters above the cake. 

“This union with the former Alliance is important. I think the symbolism of marrying off someone as close to her as I would benefit from gaining the Alliance Roundtable’s trust.” He doesn’t try to sound proud, not overconfident. The fact that he is close to the Emperor is nothing to gloat over, just a reality. Dorothea seems to understand that, doesn’t try to call him out on it. He is, in truth, the person closest to Edelgard in the world. Or had been, he supposes. Byleth had somehow snatched the place from under his nose, and now she and Edelgard share secret words he knows he’ll never be privy to. 

“Huh.” Dorothea hasn’t touched her cake nor her lemonade since he revealed his answer. He watches her play with the straw on her glass. “I really didn’t think you were the type.”

“I’d do anything for the Empire. Anything to see Her Majesty’s goal achieved.”

“You told me nearly the exact same thing about arranged marriage six years ago at the Academy. I thought you might have changed your mind since then.”

“My devotion to Her Majesty is unwavering. I will not hesitate to do what needs to be done, even now that the war is over.” 

“Even deny yourself love? I told you, Hubert, a marriage isn’t something that just. Stops happening. You’ll be in it for life.”

“Me? Love?” He laughs deep under his breath, slipping on the persona he so rarely used around Dorothea anymore. “Don’t be silly. I’m not going to find love, Dorothea. Not from a woman. Not in this lifetime. Which, I have you know, I don’t expect to be a very long one.” He thinks of the black magic coursing through his veins, thinks of the scars that run across his hands and swim upstream his arms. Yes, someday he’d cast a spell that would end up his last.

“I’ve said it to you before, and I’ll say it to you again. You don’t know how the world works.”

He scoffs. The idea that he, someone whose eyes were opened to the cruelty of the world so young, is laughable. 

“I’m serious! You’re going to tangle yourself up in something you can’t get out of.” 

“I’m proficient in getting out of traps. I—”

“I don’t mean traps, Hubie. I mean life. I mean politics, nobility, etiquette, everything. You don’t know how real life works.” She takes another bite of her cake, the last one, and covers her mouth with a hand while she speaks. “Most people never kill, did you know that? Being around all of us murderers, it’s easy to forget. But most people find themselves in traps not nearly that physical. Marriages. Children. Parents. Money. The little ins and outs of everyday life that you’ve never had to think about, busy with your war.”

“Those are all things that I can learn about, I will learn about.” He sips his coffee again, and immediately feels a little strange. What is he supposed to do, stick his pinky out?

“You can’t just learn common sense, Hubert.” She swallows, lowers her hand. “You’re making a mistake here. I really don’t think that you’re actually going to be able to do it—get married off—but honestly? Saints help you if you do. Getting married is the easiest part of the marriage.” 

She quirks her lip into a frown, squints her eyes, like if she looks at him a particular way she’ll figure something out. Then, a smile. “Let’s just hope Edie is smart enough not to pick you. Since you obviously weren’t smart enough to disagree.”

He looks at her, perfectly able to mask any doubt that might creep into his heart. “Let’s hope for something.”

* * *

After peeling off from Dorothea, Hubert returns to his work. If he’s going to be married off he has much to plan and not enough time to do it. Arrangements would have to be made, of course. He’d need more spies in the Alliance—the amount he already had stationed there. But if his future wife is to be an Alliance noble, and his future in-law a member of the Alliance Roundtable, a new level of surveillance is needed, especially in those first few months. A partner, living here, in Enbarr. He works late into the night, vetting candidates to expand his network with.

Hubert's eyes haze and he has to blink to refocus on his spies reports. Mm, he doesn’t know how he let Edelgard convince him not to have that last cup of coffee as he was leaving her room. As late as it is, he still has work to do, but there was no way he was getting any of it done if he could barely keep his eyes open.

The Fearghus territories were holding up. Linhardt was keeping his word in keeping Garreg Mach free of anything unsavory or questionable. Another spy tailing Arundel dead. The typical things.

So why not let himself daydream, just a smidge? Or was it called nightdreaming at this hour?

A partner here, in Enbarr. He wonders if they’d send a spy. 

Imagine that. 

Another spy. Or maybe an assassin. Someone here, sent by the Alliance to do some dirty work. The mind games he could play with another spy. He wonders if she’d have a cipher of her own for him to decode. 

He could imagine falling in love with someone like that, through encoded letters and reports back to her liege. He wonders what the expression on his future partner’s face might be when he lets her know he’s figured her out. Or maybe they’d both know from the beginning. Poison each other on the same day, falling down dead hand in hand. 

He wonders what it might be like to have sex with another spy—surely, that would be a part of the marriage agreement neither could deny upholding. So they’d both be pretending to have sex with each other. But how different was that from all sex? Just two people, playing roles, pretending like they were close to pleasure? It’s not something he’s experienced himself, but he knows humans enough to know there will always be a level of artifice between them. But, oh, knowing the roles they were playing would surely make it all the more erotic.

A touch against his shoulders makes him nearly jump out of his seat. He’s better trained than that, though, and he has the assailant against a wall within a moment, knife against their throat.

Knife against their five o’clock shadow. Hubert sighs. Knife against their orange five o’clock shadow. 

“Ferdinand. What is it we said about you sneaking up on me while I’m sleeping?”

“Hubert.” Ferdinand smiles only after he removes the knife from his jugular. “What is it we said about you trying to kill me?” 

Hubert steps away from where he held Ferdinand against the wall, the residual heat of where he pressed against his chest still clinging to his arm. It must be the lack of layers—Ferdinand only wears a white loose shirt and trousers. Instead, his jacket is in his hands, one hand on each shoulder, like he was about to hang it over a chair. Odd.

“You’ll need to stop being so easy to kill. I probably will slit your throat accidentally someday.”

“And what a tragedy that will be!” Ferdinand’s hand comes up to touch where the knife pressed against his neck, but there’s no blood. Hubert would never be that sloppy. Ferdinand pushes off the wall and walks back towards the table, slinging his jacket across a chair, and placing a stack of papers Hubert hadn’t noticed down on the table. “Reports from Dagda, Brigid, Sreng. One from someone stationed at Fodlan’s throat, as well—an interesting read if I do say so myself.”

“Claude again?”

“I do not think he is a man that we will be able rid ourselves of so easily.” Ferdinand stands with his hands on the back of the chair over his coat and leans forwards, stretching his back out. “I swear, sleeping upright like that is what gives you such horrible posture. It makes my spine ache just seeing it.” 

Hubert uses a handkerchief to wipe down the knife, even though there’s no trace of blood on it. He slides the knife back into its spot at his left side, for safekeeping. “I don’t have horrible posture.”

Ferdinand actually laughs at that, and it somehow feels too loud at this late at night. “Hubert, it is truly abysmal, I must say. Remind me again, how tall are you?”

“One hundred and eighty-eight centimeters.” 

Ferdinand hums. “And how tall do you think you are slumped over like that?” At the mention of his posture, Hubert realizes that yes, his back does hurt. He rolls his shoulders, straightens them. “There we go. That is much better. Look how much taller you look now.”

“I fail to see how ‘looking taller’ is going to help me win a war,” he says, but can’t quite feel the venom there that should be. He sits back down in his chair, body too tired to stand much longer. The second he sits, his back slouches over again, and he reaches for the papers.

“You would be surprised, Hubert. I hear being tall can win you many things in life,” Ferdinand says, and Hubert begins to think that he might be delirious with exhaustion because he cannot even begin to process the relevancy of what Ferdinand just said.

“What?” he asks and tries to focus his eyes on the reports in front of him. Yes, this was what his mind was best at doing this late at night. Processing papers, perfecting his schemes. Not...whatever this was.

“Goddess, Hubert. Why do you not just go to bed? I cannot foresee you getting any work done in this state.” 

“‘This state’ is how I get all of my work done.” 

“Sleeping upright at the war table, drooling on your maps?”

“I was not drooling.” A little wet spot on his map speaks otherwise, and he puts a gloved hand over it.

“If you demand that you stay up all night, why not at least take a small rest? A recharge, as it were.”

“That’s what I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted by—”

“A lying down recharge, Hubert,” Ferdiand says, his voice tinged with frustration. “A horizontal one.”

Hubert frowns, and rubs a hand against his face, fingers probing his eyes. “One doesn’t take ‘a lying down recharge’ at two in the morning.” 

Ferdinand quiets at that, if only for a second. One blessed, quiet second. “If not a recharge, then let me distract you a smidgen. An active conversation can get your mind prepared to continue reading your reports.” 

“Do I even want to ask why you are still awake yourself, Prime Minister?”

“You do not,” Ferdinand says, and Hubert lifts his eyes again to look at him. Ferdinand is still standing bent over the chair, but now more brazenly, so he can rest his elbows against the table. “Though I do not think it will surprise you that you are not the only one who keeps late hours, working deep into the night.” 

That was a good point. He forces his eyes to focus on Ferdinand. He does have dark circles rimming his eyes like dark spectacles, and there’s a particularly gaunt look to his expression. The stubble on his chin was certainly three or four days unshaved, Hubert would estimate from his observations of Ferdinand’s facial hair growth. His lips were dry, and his hair frizzy at the top, not every strand secured into his braid. “Ah.” 

“Precisely.” Ferdinand straightens his back, and for one glorious second, Hubert thinks he might be moving to leave him in peace, but then the chair opposite him on the war table is drawn back and sat in. Ferdinand looks directly at him like this, keeping eye contact even with the exhaustion in his eyes. “So, will you let me be your distraction?”

Hubert sighs, and pushes a few documents and papers and maps away from him on the table. He leans forward in his seat, folds his fingers, and gives Ferdinand his attention. “Sure, but I will not be the one to come up with the topic of conversation tonight.” 

Ferdinand laughs, and yes, Hubert notices it better now. He’s exhausted as well. Hubert can hear it in the waver of his prim and proper voice. But Ferdinand still laughs all the same.

Hubert wonders why he’s doing his work this late, anyway. Hubert being secretive with his work is nothing new, even though Ferdinand is well aware of the war in the dark he is conducting. But Ferdinand had so little to be secretive about. It could always just be gathering the reports for Hubert, but then wouldn’t he go to bed himself at this late hour, like he’d told Hubert to? Why sit with him, why care to provide distraction? 

“Hm. What to talk about other than work and war?” Ferdinand muses aloud. Well, it was a little reassuring to have another friend who didn’t have a personal life outside of the castle. “I heard that the orchestra is in the last steps of its rebuilding efforts. This month, they say, we can expect a widespread of new musical performances.” 

“Dorothea talked at me about it this afternoon. At length.” Truth be told, it had taken him nearly two hours to get out of the woman’s grasp. He hopes that her popularity will skyrocket even higher soon, so she won’t be able to go to little cafes like that undistracted. Not getting captured to listen about a new dress she was commissioning on a simple shopping trip would be a gift. “She seems excited about it. She said that many of the opera’s players are finding more work there, more financial stability. She also raved to me about the operas debuting this month. Three.” 

“Is it not exciting?” 

“Plenty exciting,” Hubert replies, unenthused. 

“She says she and Manuela are bringing back one of my favorites from my youth. I provide patronage to Mittlefrank, of course, so I have season passes, but they both gifted me tickets all the same.” Ferdinand looks happy, which is much easier for Hubert to deal with than being sad or angry or discontent or whatever passionate emotion Ferdinand bombarded him with on a daily basis. This was much less work. 

“That certainly sounds like something,” Hubert says, and the words instantly feel meaningless to him.

Ferdinand frowns a moment. Ah, perhaps not the right answer. Usually, in times of exhaustion, blindly agreeing with Ferdinand worked, after all, so he thought he should try his luck. Ferdinand pauses a beat before speaking. “You really are tired, hm?”

“Dismally.” 

“What more do you have to work on tonight?” 

Hubert lets his eyes wander down to the papers on the table. Spread out like this, it seemed so little. “Taking notes on all of these reports. See if any of them seem suspicious if they could have been faked. Write correspondence back. It’s terrible to keep someone stationed undercover waiting.” 

“Hm.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Hubert can feel Ferdinand’s gaze on him. Perhaps he has something on his face. He thought his many years of acne were over, but there had to be something to make Ferdinand look at him so. “Which opera?”

“Pardon?” 

“Which of your favorite operas is Mittlefrank putting on?”

Ferdinand’s face drifts into a smile. _“Sabbatini.”_ There’s a light that sparks in his tired eyes when he says it. And Hubert is struck with a memory of Ferdinand as just a boy, eagerly recanting to him the plot of an opera he hadn’t known that Hubert had already seen. Hubert can see that same boy in him now, behind the stubble and the scars and the frizzy hair. Now, Ferdinand looks lazy, wistful. Hubert wonders if he himself looks just as wistful at this window to their youth. “Do you remember it?”

“I don’t.” Hubert remembers it fairly well, actually. He’d attended the opera somewhat frequently as a child, alongside his mother or his father or Edelgard. Most of the nobles in Enbarr did. After his attempted run-away, he’d been restricted to the castle for a year, and after that, the incessant and frivolous opera-trips ceased. But _Sabbatini_ he remembers. And yet, merely to fill the space, he asks, “Remind me?”

And so, Ferdinand begins a grand retelling of the story of _Sabbatini_. His words grow more eager the more he recounts, and his excitement shines through his tired skin like a candle through thin parchment. He watches Ferdinand as he talks, the way he waves his hands, the smile that spread across his face. He’s known Ferdinand for many years now, and even as his voice has changed and deepened with maturity, he still speaks with the same cadence. Hubert lets his mind drift in the incessant noble lilt, the pattern of Ferdinand’s speech comfortingly familiar. 

Sabbatini is met by three ghosts in the gardens of her estate the night preceding her engagement announcement. Unhappy with being married off, she begs the ghosts to disfigure her as an escape from her future husband. The following morning she awakens as a man. Thinking she’s free of the arrangement, she sings a beautiful aria in her newly bestowed tenor. But, her house decides to marry Sabbatini regardless. She and her new husband argue for a bit as newlyweds, there’s some argument between the housekeepers, (Hubert always found that part silly), and some uncle who’s constantly trying to ruin her reputation. As two married men, Sabbatini and her husband fall in love, and halfway through their final duet, the ghosts return and turn Sabbatini back into a woman, requiring the singer to switch from tenor to soprano mid-song. The myth it recounts is a historical reason why political marriage between two crestless men was lawful, though such a rarity they were often referred to as “Sabbatini partnerships.”

“Romantic, is it not?” Ferdinand says, and Hubert realizes that his speech must be over.

“Mm. I particularly liked the part where the maid cuts the gardener’s fingers off with his own shears.”

“Of course you liked that part. Just think of it. One of ours will be well on their way to a story like that soon.” 

Ah, Hubert thinks. So that’s what this was. A guiding conversation, of sorts. “Is that topic on your mind?”

“Surely. I am not too worried about it, though.”

“No?” Hubert rubs his hands together. He wishes for something to do with them, something to keep them occupied. He wishes for a cup of coffee, somewhere in the back of his head. He couldn’t just tell Ferdinand it would be him, of course. “Did you decline Her Majesty’s invitation?”

“Yes, well. Of course!” The tone of disbelief in Ferdinand’s voice leaves Hubert confused. Why was it such an impossible thing to think? “Arranged marriages, oh, no, no. That would not be for me. I would much rather fall in love with someone the old way, you know? Courting, candlelight dinners. Long strolls through the gardens. I would rather my life be a _Green Summer_ or an _Immacolata_ , not some farce about crests and arranged marriage.”

“But you found the prospect romantic, didn’t you? What’s wrong with it?” Hubert doesn’t know why, but for some reason, he finds himself defensive. It’s not like Ferdinand knows that Hubert will be the one married off. This was no personal attack on him. But, no, rather, it felt like a personal affront to Hubert’s choices, choices that Ferdinand didn’t even know of yet.

“Romantic for someone else, not for me. My interests lay elsewhere.” Ferdinand looks at his hands a moment, fiddles with his braid. Hubert can feel himself getting more tired by the second. “Anyway! I am hoping that Constance will be chosen for the arrangement. I exchanged letters with her this week. Being involved in an important political marriage is just the push that House Nuvelle needs to return to its former glory!”

Constance? The identity-confused Nuvelle girl? What a pain. He mourns the unfortunate soul to marry that one someday. “No houses should be restored to their former glory, Ferdinand. That’s the exact opposite of what the last proclamation you yourself signed intends to do.” His voice doesn’t come out nearly as definitive as he hoped.

“But think of how it would help her. Her, personally, not just her house.” 

Hubert looks down to the papers sprawled in front of him. Gathers them together. “Constance von Nuvelle is a smart young girl. Smarter, perhaps, following the demise of her House. I recall you saying a very similar thing about yourself, not so long ago.” He straightens the papers, tapping the sheets down against the table so the edges all aligned. “She deserves more of a chance at living life for her own than to just marry herself off to some Alliance diplomat. She was stuck underneath Garreg Mach for so long, I don’t want von Nuvelle stuck in a marriage as well.” 

Now, Ferdinand only looks frustrated, none of that nostalgic wistfulness left in his voice. Instead, his arms are crossed, shoulders raised in tension. “So who would you marry off, then? None of the Black Eagle House are willing to accept the proposal, save the one you just rejected. Shall we just select a random commoner off the street? I wager the Roundtable will adore that one!” 

Hubert moves the papers set out in front of him about two centimeters to the left and sets his pen perfectly parallel to it. What damage could it do? Telling Ferdinand that he had accepted the proposal wasn’t spoiling the negotiations before they were solidified. It wasn’t technically telling him anything, not like telling him that Edelgard has as much as confirmed that he was the one going to be wed. For once in his life, Hubert doesn’t plan for the venom in his voice, and yet it comes out all the same. “Did it never occur to you that I might have accepted Her Majesty’s proposal?” 

The frustration in Ferdinand’s expression falls instantly. His jaw falls slack, his eyes widen. While Hubert had expected surprise, he hadn't expected bewilderment, he hadn’t expected shock. Even after a few moments, Ferdinand stays that way—silent, just looking.

“So it hadn’t occurred to you,” Hubert says, finally, breaking the stunned silence. This seems to get Ferdinand back into his own head, and he gasps, then waves his hands in some absent way. 

“But, Hubert,” a beat, like Ferdinand hadn’t planned what to say next, “you yourself are single-handedly spearheading a war! You cannot get married. We need you here, in the castle, in Enbarr!”

“Yes,” Hubert hisses, his voice lowered. “A secret war, need I remind you. A war no one is supposed to know about.” He had an affectionate spot for Ferdinand, but his boisterous attitude wasn't the best for covert operations. Sometimes he regrets ever revealing to Ferdinand the secrets he had learned about Those Who Slither in the Dark, but it couldn’t be ignored the degree to which The Prime Minister’s assistance had thrust the battles behind doors forward. “This, Ferdinand, this is the sort of cover that one doesn’t pass up when it falls into your lap. It’s no secret that I’m suspicious. If I have a wedding to prepare for, a wife and children, eventually, there’s less of a chance I myself will be suspected.”

“But—” Ferdinand sputters. This is about how he looks when stumped at the war table when all his hours of preparation still didn’t prepare him for someone’s rebuttal. He’s quick on his feet, though, even if he can’t keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “You do not possess a crest! I do not predict the Alliance will be pleased to arrange a crestless marriage. Do you really think that is what the Roundtable wants?” 

“And yet, it is precisely what the Alliance will get.” Would his life be easier if he was born with a crest? Certainly, in many ways. If he had been born with the Macuil crest instead of his sister—the magic he’d be able to do! His hands would not be in the state they were now, that’s for certain. A crest would have allowed him to cut his bloody path more efficiently and made him a more valuable bargaining chip in his lady’s arsenal. But at the same time, if he had been born with a crest instead of his sister, it might have been him Arundel slaughtered with his mother all those years ago. 

Hubert gets so caught up in his own thoughts that he nearly doesn’t notice Ferdinand’s sputtering in front of him. The man is actively talking with his hands now. He’s bare of his gloves and gesticulates out while he talks. “Do you not— well, I just thought that. I was under the impression that the institution of marriage was not something you were interested in.” Hubert looks at him, squints his eyes. In the low light of the candles, with the distance of the large war table between them, he’s reminded of how it feels like his eyesight fails him more as the years go on. 

“You’re right, Ferdinand,” he says. “It doesn’t interest me. Which is precisely why I intend on doing it.”

Through his glance, Hubert can see that Ferdinand looks… embarrassed, perhaps. Maybe it was from the lack of sleep, or the orange light of the candle, or a trick of the eye with his unshaven face, but he looks to be flushed. “I am afraid I don’t understand,” Ferdinand says, and it’s fantastic to hear the Prime Minister finally admit a hole in his knowledge. 

Hubert sighs. He has told Ferdinand, of all people, things he would never tell anyone else. Confided in him knowledge that he could never voice aloud to even Edelgard. Over these years, in school and in battle, Ferdinand has become a tea-time confidant of unexpected origin. Before Edelgard’s rise to power, Hubert was sure the man would crumble along with his nobility-obsessed mindset, but instead, he’d grown stronger. Hubert has told Ferdinand fears of his, flaws of his, that which he could not allow himself to voice to others. So why not tell him something now?

“I…” He plays with the sleeve of his jacket as he talks. Hubert has always made eye contact to intimidate, to wound. It had no purpose in moments like these, by the light of a couple candles, so close to being drowned in their own wax. “I’m not someone who’s going to fall in love, Ferdinand. Not ever.” The words feel strange coming out of his mouth, as Hubert has surely thought them before, but never in words, only feeling. “I have never been able to picture it. Me with a happy wife, happy kids, a happy family? It’s absurd. When I try and think of myself, in love, I see monsters crawling out of their skin in old paintings, clawing away from the light of day and back into the shadows. I see convoluted tales of tragedy, trickery, espionage, murder. I see myself dressed in the costume of the villain in _Mallochio_ or _The Marriage of Gullvieg_. I’m not someone who’s going to get to fall in love.” He sets his hands back on the table, breathes. “I might as well marry this Alliance woman, just to spare one of the rest of you a loveless marriage from which you can never escape.”

Ferdinand says nothing, but Hubert can hear him breathing. Finally, he looks up to Ferdinand’s face. His expression is set into something visceral but unreadable. Hubert can see him worrying at his lips with his teeth. The silence extends too long, uncomfortable.

“Do you understand?” he asks, prompting his friend to speak. Usually, Ferdinand had no trouble speaking his mind even without Hubert’s encouragement. It must be the hour of night.

“Why dedicate yourself to a life of such misery?” Ferdinand asks, finally. When he does speak, his voice is small, somehow, not as loud and exuberant as usual. “Why promise yourself to a marriage you intend from the forefront to be loveless?”

“That’s the nature of political marriage. It’s better than no marriage, some might say,” Hubert says. He purses his lips. “Better than whatever they imagine the alternative to be.”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Hubert.” Hubert doesn’t expect the hurt in Ferdinand’s voice, and can’t process it at this hour, so his voice lingers in the air like the smoke from the candles. 

“It’s much easier to see yourself martyred than others. Someone has to get married.” Hubert thinks of the birthdays he’s spent in some dark cold room of the castle or monastery, with only a cup of coffee and a different assignment to wish him a new year. He thinks of the holidays he’s forgotten the days of. He thinks of the blood on his hands, the lives he’s taken. He thinks of the persona he’s spent so long cultivating that he sometimes can’t step out of it—the way that people on the street might tremble in fear if he looks at them, quirks his lips just so. “I will do anything for Lady Edelgard’s goal. I’ve done much worse to get to this point than get married to a woman I don’t love, and I’m sure I will do much worse in the future.”

Another long silence from Ferdinand. For a moment, Hubert thinks that he intends to leave the room even, before he asks, very quietly, “What if you did find someone you loved?”

“Impossible,” Hubert laughs. A funny thing, his laugh. He’d learned to do it in such a way to use humor as a weapon to strike fear into the hearts of those around him. He’s gotten so used to using it as a tool he often forgets what a normal laugh from himself even sounds like. Both laughs would sound disingenuous at this point. “I don’t think I'm capable of the feeling.”

“But what if you did!” Ferdinand is suddenly loud now, slamming a hand down on the war table as he does so frequently in negotiations. “Just tell me. What if months, years, into the marriage, just what if you found someone you did love? What would you do then? You would be stuck!”

Hubert tries to picture it, but cannot. Him, falling in love? Dotingly looking at some mistress petite in his arms? He’s too tired for this. The idea feels ridiculous, he can’t even get that far. So, instead, like whenever he has a thought he cannot understand, he turns to tactics, to rational thought. “At that point, I’d have seen a new Fodlan, cleansed of those monsters wearing human skins. In that world, when that day comes, I can easily put up a loveless marriage.”

“Hubert,” Ferdinand says and says nothing more. From his voice, Hubert can tell he wants something. The way he says his name is seeking something. And, no, no. Hubert likes to be relied on, he likes to be in service, but he does not like to be sought after.

So he turns to spitfire, instead. “Do you intend to try and stop me?” he snaps. And now, this laugh in his voice, the smile on his face are nowhere near authentic. He can feel that old persona, the one he’d grown so used to shedding around Ferdinand, slides back onto his face like a mask. “Before you make your attempt, at least do me the pleasure of telling me why you care so much.” 

Before the words are even fully out of Hubert’s throat, Ferdinand interrupts him. Not with his voice, but his chair screeching against the floor as he quickly stands. Now, for once, Hubert has to look up at him. Across the table, through and the low light of the candles, he can’t quite make out Ferdinand’s expression. His face is down, looking at his feet as he gathers his red jacket and folds it over one arm. “I think it is time I left,” he finally says. “Do forgive me my abruptness, I just realized I—” Ferdinand stops, and Hubert can practically see the inner machinations of his brain at work. “I need to leave.” 

And with that, Ferdinand exits, loudly. Fabric against fabric, the clicking of his riding boots, somehow the quickness of his retreat makes even the air parting around him loud. And then, the heavy wooden doors of the war council room click shut behind him.

The room feels quieter without Ferdinand’s presence, and Hubert can hear the ringing in his ears in the silence. When he looks down, he expects to see the papers strewn out before him, messy, as a wind had flown through the room. But instead, they are still in orderly stacks, pen resting perfectly parallel to the pages. Well, he supposes he did do that.

However strange, the conversation did wake him up. So Hubert does what he does best, buries himself in his work. When he falls asleep that night, it’s not the memory of Ferdinand’s face, confused and hurt, that lulls him to sleep, but thoughts of Brigid dignitaries and unrest in Sreng.

* * *

The days that follow aren’t abnormal. He reads his reports. Sends correspondence. It rains one day, and after the weather abates he spends the rest of the day wandering around the castle grounds, making sure every spell and sigil he’s drawn is still intact and working. He doesn’t see much of Ferdinand, doesn’t see much of Dorothea either, but that isn’t abnormal. Most of his life, he’s lived as a pair with her Majesty. But Edelgard is in a duo with another now, and Hubert is, once again—like those three years he spent in her bedroom, committing himself to her return—entirely alone. He’s never rejected a solitary life, and he supposes, after these negotiations, soon, his life will be solitary no longer. As he thinks about it, it’s not a painful thought. To be part of a pair again. 

It’s not for three days that he’s called back to Edelgard’s bedroom outside of his regular meetings. He’s ready for it. Anxious for it, actually. Who would he be married to? He thinks of the women he remembers from the Golden Deer house. While some were preferable to others, each was a strong, capable person. He’s ready to start planning for the rest of his life.

When he opens the door to Edelgard’s bedroom, he is wholly unsurprised at their former professor’s presence. Byleth was a constant at her side these days, but unlike Hubert, sat next to her as equals instead of taking Hubert’s spot standing behind her. What he’s not expecting is the Prime Minister there too, hair freshly washed and curling on itself, leaning against the Emperor’s bedpost like he’s able to claim some ownership over the place. 

“Your majesty,” Hubert says nearly under his breath as he bows in Edelgard’s direction. He glances at Byleth and Ferdinand and tilts his head to both of them in respect. He fears the day that he’ll be expected to bow to the former professor as well. Until then, he’ll just insult her in his mind. Well, even then, he’ll probably still insult her in his mind as he bows.

“Good morning,” Edelgard says from where she sits at the small table beside her bed. Byleth sits across from her in the other chair. There’s tea. It’s a regular scene in their make-do office. Hubert remembers overhearing (read: eavesdropping on) a conversation between the two of them. Byleth, asking why Edelgard still used her childhood bedroom as an office during a war. Edelgard, explaining how the words she spoke of war had to be done behind closed doors, with not even a maid able to listen in. So Edelgard still spent most of her time in this room—just as he had in the three years of her absence—making various plans, as far as she could get away from watchful eyes and listening ears in the castle. “I trust you already know why I called for your attendance.” 

“I take it the negotiations went well?” Hubert says, somewhere between a question and a statement. It had taken him many years to no longer feel awkward in front of Edelgard. He’d spent much of his youth proving himself to her, despite knowing that she never required it. But now, after all these years, he knows that he is capable of anything she could possibly ask and more. He’s not anxious in her presence anymore, hasn’t been for a long time. She and he had spent too many years cooped up in the same room after night had fallen—finally able to speak freely in the intimate hush of the dark—to feel self-conscious anymore. Too many hours they’d spent dreaming of a new Fodlan together, speaking aloud plans so delicate saying them nearly seemed to curse the idea. 

“I would say the talks were successful,” Edelgard says and sets down her cup of tea. “The Roundtable has decided on a candidate for marriage, just as we have.” 

“I expected no less.” 

He stands there, waiting for further instruction. 

It’s strange, feeling all of their eyes on him. The professor’s stare was intrusive, almost violent with its constancy. He’s familiar with Edelgard’s stare. She always wants to make eye contact with him. And Ferdinand, though out of Hubert’s sight, is obviously focused on Hubert. He can feel his eyes boring holes onto the back of his head. 

It was his least favorite thing, being watched like this. His and Edelgard’s dynamic was always that she would be seen, while he would work his magic in the darkness. Now, with the attention on him, he doesn’t know what to do. He flounders.

“Ahem,” he clears his throat, gently trying to prompt Edelgard to speak. “Who am I to be engaged with?” 

“No one, yet,” Edelgard says, plainly. “The Roundtable and I have both come to an agreement not to reveal to each other yet the exact specifications for this marriage. Rather…” She pauses, and begins her sentence over. “Similar to me, the Roundtable has some doubts about their choice for their intended. We have decided, as a governing group, that within a month’s time, we will hold negotiations again, having given our choices more time to consider such a life-changing event, and at that time come to a decision about the marriage.” 

Hubert listens to her with the same rapt attention that he gives any of her words. 

He supposes it makes sense. Decisions like these, after all, were not made overnight. And yet, Hubert almost wishes they were. Why ponder more than necessary over something as simple as a marriage? It wasn’t worth the time.

“This period is for you and your intended to seriously consider marriage before throwing yourselves into it. I will be heavily decreasing your workload until both I and the Alliance have drawn our conclusions.”

Hubert opens his mouth to object, but a single glare from Edelgard quiets him.

“I will also be decreasing Duke Aegir’s workload this month. I have been advised that Alliance marriage traditions are different to our own. Similarly, I have been informed that your knowledge of etiquette leaves something to be desired. Since we can presume that the Alliance, still stuck in the ways of old, will be sending a noble, Ferdinand has volunteered his knowledge of traditional courting with the intention of teaching you where your own skills lack.” She looks at him again, eyes sharp when he tries to interrupt, again. “This is not an assurance that the marriage will occur. It’s no promise. I want you to truly consider this decision over the course of the next month. Hopefully, the knowledge and experience Ferdinand offers will be beneficial for your understanding of what would be best for you.”

“Your Majesty, it’s not a matter of what would be—”

“Do not interrupt me. I won’t hear it, Hubert.” She stands from where she sits at the desk, slowly. “You will not dig yourself into a hole without considering if you’ll ever want to climb your way out of it.” 

He opens his mouth to say something. Stops.

Was it so insane? A month to decide a marriage. Most arranged marriages took months and months of planning and negotiation—there were dowries to be decided, after all, suitors to be sorted through. As much as Hubert desires to get this marriage over and done with, this was nothing too unreasonable.

A whole month of decreased work, though? This could set them back weeks—no, months into the progress they’ve made against Arundel. 

He takes another breath. “I don’t think at the point we are at in the war I can decrease my workload.”

“I don’t think at the point we are at in the war you can get married,” Edelgard counters him. The lack of venom in her voice only makes the sting sharper. “But I trust you to make your own decisions, Hubert. You’re a grown man. If this is truly what you decide, I will not stop you. I just want you to take the time you need to really decide.”

Hubert purses his lips. He’s thinking so loudly he fears it’s audible to everyone in the room.

He could refuse the idea. Attempt to reject it entirely. Say that he does not need time to think nor the, flames help him, _etiquette_ lessons. 

He hasn’t taken a break in his work since before he was twelve years old, slaving away in this very room researching ways to get Edelgard back from Fhirdiad when in truth she was locked in some grimy room far beneath his feet. He never intended to take a break—there was no vacation from war.

But it was only a month of decreased work. To consider a decision that would, as much as he tried to deny it, change the course of his life.

Well. He supposes it makes sense.

Finally, he nods at her. “Yes, your Majesty.” 

“Good,” Edelgard responds. She sighs and then walks back to her chair, collapses into it.

Ferdinand speaks for the first time since Hubert arrived, and the words feel like they’re breaching some sacred silence, no matter how reasonable. “Do not take this lightly, Hubert. It is a big decision that will follow you for the rest of your days.” It sounds so simple when he says it like that. “I am hoping that the knowledge that I pass unto you will give you some idea what the rest of your life might look like if you go through with this. A trial run, one might call it.”

“Don’t trivialize this,” Edelgard pitches in, from where she sits at the table once more. Three against one, Hubert thinks. The dastards. 

Hubert agrees with her for the time being. He can always think about how much he actually agrees later, but right now, it’s as simple as: “Of course, your majesty.”

“I don’t know why that was like pulling teeth,” she tells the former professor quietly, who just nods. How was anyone supposed to understand what she was trying to convey when she never said anything? “Both of you leave,” Edelgard says. “We will reconvene this discussion on the first of the Harpstring Moon. Until then,” she looks at Ferdinand, for once, and Hubert feels some tension leave his body. “Do whatever teaching you must. My last intention is to insult the Alliance during this sensitive time. Make sure that Hubert is prepared for this marriage, whatever his final decision might be.” 

Ferdinand nods, with a slight smile on his face. “I have a wide range of knowledge on traditions, courting rituals, and etiquette not only from Adrestia, but also from Farghus and the Alliance. He will not disappoint by the time I am finished with him, that I can assure you.” 

Hubert looks at Ferdinand closer now. The man looks entirely different from how he did a few nights ago. Now, his curls are defined and bouncy as he talks instead of frizzy. The dark circles from under his eyes are gone, and instead, he looks motivated, focused. The man that he spoke to in the candlelight feels like a memory.

“Splendid. Now, leave,” Edelgard orders, and Hubert has to applaud her bluntness. “I was answering letters far too late into the morning, and I, for one, am exhausted. Start your lessons whenever you please, Ferdinand, but don’t involve me in it. I, for one, am going to return to bed.”

“Of course, your Majesty,” Hubert says, at about the same time Ferdinand says, “Thank you, Edelgard.” They make eye contact before Hubert turns his eyes to the ground as he bows before leaving.

Ferdinand follows him and shuts the door behind them. The smile on his face is big when he turns to Hubert. 

The hallway is nowhere near as private as Edelgard’s room. Here, he can hear people moving about the castle, attending to whatever business they might have. It makes sense, but suddenly, upon leaving the comfortable uncomfort of Edelgard’s room, they are thrown into public. 

Ferdinand seems to have no qualms about speaking in the light of day, though, as he turns to Hubert right in the middle of the hall. “Oh, Hubert, you would not believe the things I have prepared for you.”

Hubert winces, and for the first time in a while, feels a twinge of some unknown emotion in his heart. “I’d really rather not know.”

“I will go over my schedule with you this afternoon.” Ferdinand’s smile turns devilish. “Tomorrow, horseback riding.”

Ah. So that’s what that unidentifiable emotion was, Hubert thinks. Fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, the lessons begin. Posture, tea, and horseback riding.


	2. Great Tree Moon, Week 1, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lessons begin. Posture, horseback riding, and tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I can’t believe the amount of positive feedback! I’m so excited to share everything I have in store for you. I genuinely tried to keep this chapter on the shorter end, which didn’t work out very well. From the draft I have of Chapter 3, that one will definitely be shorter, so don’t worry if these first two felt sort of long.
> 
> As always, beta'd by the lovely [GuiltyBystanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyBystanders/pseuds/GuiltyBystanders) whom I love.

The room that Ferdinand leads him to after the meeting has recently been dusted. Hubert knows that it hasn’t been utilized since the beginning of the war, so surely it had gathered dust since. A maid’s room, or perhaps a cook’s quarters. Nonetheless, since Edelgard’s rise to power, almost all of those rooms have been cleared out. The castle, once overstuffed and bustling with underpaid staff now serves only a solitary emperor and a few of her loyal companions. There are still two or three cooks, a head housekeeper, and a couple of gardeners, but Edelgard makes certain that their paychecks exceed her own. 

With the lack of housing staff, there is now an excess of empty, dusty rooms. And very few people to clean up the mildew as it collects.

Therefore, as Ferdinand leads him into a heretofore uninhabited room, he’s surprised by its sunny atmosphere. A gentle afternoon sun leaks in through teal curtains Hubert doesn’t recognize. There’s still furniture in the room, a mattress on a divan bed frame, a wooden dresser, a bare bookshelf. All things that probably didn’t fit through the door. In the middle of the room, there is a small table and two matching chairs. Somehow, there is a full black chalkboard, the type back in their classroom at Garreg Mach all those years ago. How this one fit through the door was beyond Hubert.

He looks to Ferdinand, who has stepped into the room and is in the process of removing his jacket to set it down across the back of one of the chairs.

“Did you set this all up yourself?” he asks as he follows Ferdinand to the table. He doesn’t sit yet, the chair opposite to Ferdinand looming in front of him. He always found sitting down in the presence of others uncomfortable, after all the years he’s spent standing at Edelgard’s side. Once he was sitting it felt normal, but the action itself made him feel vulnerable. 

“Ah, yes. I did need some help with the chalkboard.”

“Are you dissatisfied with the room you’ve been assigned in the castle?” 

Ferdinand sits down, without any of Hubert’s qualms or awkwardness. So Hubert just hovers, not knowing if he’s supposed to take his jacket off as well.

“Oh, no, it suits me wonderfully. I get the most wonderful view of Enbarr with the sunset as a background. I merely thought that this room could work as a classroom of sorts. My room is, well, there are a few distractions to be found there.” Ferdinand bridges his fingers. “Here, we can focus entirely on your studies.”

“You talk as if I’m enrolling in another Academy.”

“You might as well be!” Ferdinand says, voice jovial. Where did he find all that joy? “I am going to teach you in a month what most nobles are taught in—why—years! I cannot even estimate how many years. When I spoke with Bernadetta about it, she said that—Oh, Hubert, will you just sit down?” 

Hubert very pointedly does not sit down. Instead, he fixes a well-practiced glare down on Ferdinand from where he looms between the chalkboard and the chair in which he’s supposed to sit. “I like standing.”

The glare doesn’t phase Ferdinand in the slightest. “I do not care. It is impolite. Sit.”

Hubert attempts to darken his glare. Murder, torture, blood, death.

Ferdinand only smiles back at him, the sort of fake smile that nobles seem so adept at mustering. His orange eyes flicker to the chair, then to Hubert, then back to the chair. 

Hubert adjusts his jacket, pulling at the hems. Coughs under his breath. Slides the chair out from the desk. Sits. Glares back at Ferdinand, expectant.

“That was fine. Stand back up, would you? I want you to sit again.” 

Hubert narrows his eyes. “You want me to _what_?” 

Ferdinand’s smile doesn’t waver but instead grows more authentic. “Stand up, and sit down again.”

“You can’t be serious.” The amount of disdain in Hubert’s voice can’t come close to conveying how unenthusiastic he actually feels. It’s impossible.

“Oh, I am quite serious,” Ferdinand says. “Pardon my frankness, but how you just sat down was absolutely horrible. Some of that is to do with your posture, of course, but we can fix that with time.”

“Don’t tell me you intend on making me walk around with a book on my head.” 

“Oh, that is precisely what I intend.” From the smile still across Ferdinand’s face, Hubert can tell that his so-called friend is enjoying this far too much. “Up, now. Listen to precisely what I tell you.”

Hubert sits there a few moments. He was supposed to learn the proper way to _sit_? This beyond anything in his already remarkably low expectations. Saying he hadn’t been excited about these lessons was an understatement—had spent all of lunch and his afternoon meeting dreading the prospect, actually. But he thought that Edelgard may have had a point in recommending them. Hubert had never been one for diplomacy, which he suspects might be an oversight when agreeing to a marriage built on diplomacy alone. So he understood her reasoning. But diplomacy could not possibly explain this. Why, for the love of all things terrible in this world, he should need to learn how to “properly” sit in a chair, was beyond him. 

But what was the point of arguing about it now? What, precisely, would that help? He knows what Ferdinand looks like when he won’t concede a point, no matter how ill-thought-out—like an Aegir Hound latched onto the neck of a rabbit.

He keeps his chin up and puts his hand on the table to leverage himself standing. Immediately after standing, as he takes his hand off the table he realizes that he probably shouldn’t have put his hand on the table in the first place, and watches as Ferdinand revels in Hubert discovering that on his own. 

“Splendid. Now, you are to take a few steps back. You can go to the chalkboard.” Hubert walks there. “Yes, yes, that’s good. Approach the chair again, stand behind it.”

Hubert teeters on the balls of his feet a second awkwardly, and fiddles with his fingers on one hand. He cannot believe he’s doing this. He walks back to the chair. 

“Perfect. Always approach your chair with confidence. Now, unbutton the lowest button on your jacket. When you sit, you are to put the back of your legs against the front of the chair.” 

Hubert obeys this nonsense, for now. 

“Just like that. Now, as you lower into the chair, I suggest you hitch your trousers up on your hips, as to not stretch the fabric while you do sit. And sit forwards, just to the edge of the seat. You must keep your spine in line with your hips.” 

From where Hubert is now finally sitting, he can see Ferdinand across from him at eye level, soaking all of this up. Ugh. His smile is painful to look at. 

“If you were sitting for longer, I would have suggested you get more comfortable, but with the state of your posture, it is probably best to practice sitting properly.”

“I hope you know how absolutely completely asinine this is.” Hubert wishes he was able to produce more of a dark grin, but his lower back has already started to hurt.

“Oh, I know. I am just having fun. Now, listen to me closely, and do not put your hands on the table. In your lap at all times, unless you are eating something or pouring tea,” Ferdinand explains, immediately breaking his own rules and waving his hands around while he talks like a conductor at an orchestra. 

Then, Ferdinand stands up himself, and Hubert wants to tear his own eyes out of their sockets. He did it to Faerghus king before, he has the experience. He’d probably look pretty good with an eyepatch.

Standing, Ferdinand gives him a lesson outline of what he’s to learn over the course of the next few weeks. He separates it out into categories: table manners, personal hygiene, noble activities, and then some special lessons in traditions that were particular to the Alliance. 

In the category of table manners, Ferdinand places teatime, how to make conversation, expanding Hubert’s palette, cutlery etiquette, and how to prepare simple dishes.

The personal hygiene category includes lessons on shaving to not miss spots, posture, something about using special products on his hair, choosing a cologne to wear, and plans to go into town for new suits to be commissioned. It sounds egregiously expensive. 

“Noble activities” was a catchall for everything Ferdinand wanted to teach him, Hubert hypothesizes. He talks about horseback riding, attending the opera, and dancing. Then he tacks on an outright terrifying “and more!” Hubert wants no more.

“Despite similarities between Leicester and Adrestian culture, there are also many differences. If you are to marry a noble from the Alliance, you will need to be taught specific activities and manners that suit them.” Ferdinand sounds proud while he speaks. Well, prouder than usual, which Hubert hadn’t thought possible. “Fortunately for you, my father had me educated in etiquette for the Empire, the Kingdom, and the Alliance to prepare me for marriage for a wide variety of suitors.”

“That sounds miserable,” Hubert says aloud, though he meant to keep the thought to himself. He hasn’t sat in front of a teacher and listened since Garreg Mach, nearly seven years ago now, except for additional training with the professor. Sitting in front of a chalkboard now sapped far too much energy from him. 

“Well, just be thankful that you only need to learn two cultures worth of courting rituals.” There’s some animosity in Ferdinand’s voice there, a resentment that Hubert wants to delve into more, but Ferdinand speaks first. “We will begin the real lessons tomorrow.” 

Hubert feels some of his tension deflate from him. Thank the stars. It would be too much to find out about all the useless lessons he will spend the next month suffering through and begin them on the same day. This teaching nonsense, the chalkboard sitting mockingly in the corner, has already given him a headache. How Ferdinand had found the time to plan all of this in one afternoon was beyond him. He slumps a little in his chair, and Ferdinand notices it immediately.

Ferdinand hums dismissively, and then walks from the chalkboard to the dresser, and takes a book out from the drawers. “No relaxing. Good posture is the base of all manners, and you will need a strong base. You would not believe all that I have in store for you. Get a good night’s rest—the horses love morning rides.” Ugh. 

Hubert stands up from his chair, and the adjustment already feels great. He never paid much attention to his own posture—he spent too much time hunched over Reason textbooks by candlelight to expect his back to be in any healthy position. But from just the twenty-odd minutes that he’d sat in the chair properly, his lower back is already screeching at him in pain. By the time he is standing again, he feels as sore as he did after the professor’s lance lessons. 

Just as he turns to leave, though, Ferdinand appears by his side. Before Hubert can quite register it, too distracted by his own back pain, the book in Ferdinand’s hands is placed on top of his head. “There. Now try with that.” 

The book doesn’t last a second on its newfound perch, and he catches it in his hand as it topples off. “You can’t be seriou—”

“I can be, actually.” 

Hubert stares at him, dumbfounded. A book on his head? He was supposed to learn how to stand, no, walk, with a book on his head? It was absurd. “I don’t think that is a realistic expectation, Prime Minister.”

“Hush. It is going to be easy. Simple. Take it one step at a time.” Ferdinand takes the book from Hubert’s gloved hands into his own. “It is not so difficult. If you want to do it in your room, that is entirely understandable.”

“You know how silly this looks.”

“And you, Marquis, know how silly you look hunched over like a wyvern.” Ferdinand circles around Hubert, and stands on his left, a step behind him. “Now listen to me. Start out just standing, or even sitting, with it on your head.” One of Ferdinand’s hands touches the top of Hubert’s hair, attempting to pat the curls down flat, to little avail. “Now, very still. Straighten your spine. It should actually feel quite relaxed. Most of the tension will be in your neck. There it is. Like that.” Gently, he places the book on Hubert’s head.

He feels like a marionette dangling by a string with how far he stretches his neck out. It’s horribly uncomfortable, and the book, despite being so thin, feels heavier than rock. He wonders if Ferdinand cast some spell on it to make it heavier, or if his back is really getting that bad as he ages. His neck is sore and uncomfortable. He wants to move it, perhaps crack it, now that he’s not able to. Then, he notices how much his shoulders hurt, and his back, and, oh, how he wants to slouch. This must be certifiable torture. Hubert almost thinks to take notes.

“Now, you are going to want to put your shoulders back.” Then, Ferdinand’s hands come to Hubert’s upper back, against his scapula. “Here.” Hubert attempts to roll his shoulders back as he keeps his neck and head very very still. He thinks for a moment that he must look like a peacock posturing. Or just like Ferdinand. Yes, most likely probably just like Ferdinand. 

And then, there’s the faint feeling of a hand at his lower back, and he makes a sound entirely unbecoming of someone who calls himself an assassin, somewhere between a yelp, a moan, and a gasp. There’s no hope for the book as he jumps, and it tumbles down to loudly hit the floor. He turns to Ferdinand, whose hand still lightly touches Hubert’s lower back. 

Ferdinand only looks at him, eyes wide, and then his cheeks begin to redden as he laughs. “Oh, my. I was not expecting the great Marquis von Vestra to be ticklish.”

Hubert can feel his own cheeks burn as he bends over to pick the book off the ground. 

Behind him, Ferdinand makes a spluttering noise. When Hubert stands up to give him a pointed glare, Ferdinand quickly whips his head away, and puts a hand over his mouth, surely to hide his grin.

It wasn’t Hubert’s fault he didn’t touch people very often. In his experience, everyone is a little sensitive under their clothes, he supposes. Definitely sensitive once he skins them like a fish. Ah, yes, that was a pleasant thought, much more appealing than his current embarrassment. “Prime Minister, I kindly request you keep that information to yourself if you want to live to see another morning.” 

“Of course,” Ferdinand says, while a look of glee still paints his features. Horrible.

Hubert looks away from him, and instead down at the book in his hands, willing the blood from his face. He wishes he spent more time in the sun, so his skin might be a bit more forgiving. The book stares back up at him. _Lunar Sun, Solar Moon: Forty Love Poems for the Modern Gentleman._

When he raises his head back up to see Ferdinand, halfway through buttoning his jacket up again, seemingly having already forgotten about Hubert’s unfortunate ticklishness. Only seemingly, though—Hubert knows the dastard will bring it up again when it strikes his fancy. Or, even worse, tell Bernadetta. Ferdinand smiles at him, but now it doesn’t carry the same sadistic passion as when he was laughing. “Do practice with the book on your head. As I mentioned, standing or just sitting is a fine place to start.” The last button is buttoned, and Ferdinand makes his way towards the door, opening it. “Ah, and feel free to leaf through the book, if it piques your interest. Consider it homework.” 

Hubert looks down at the book again, the blue and orange drawing of a sun and moon looking back up at him. _Homework?_ They weren’t even assigned homework at the Officer’s Academy. Flames help the future generations if Ferdinand von Aegir ever became professionally interested in education.

* * *

The book does not so much as brush the top of Hubert’s head for the rest of the day. Instead, he attempts to bury himself in the work he’s supposed to be limited from doing. Despite whatever Edelgard may claim, though, there’s always letters to write, correspondences to reply to. He dedicates himself to reading reports, listening to what the world at hand has to say.

The former Kingdom's land is still a mess. Someone has to govern them as they rebuild Fodlan, but assigning Empire nobles to new territories is just asking for a political disaster. The Faerghan loyalists may be dead, but resentment still lingered in their former territories, and who knows what traps Cornelia left behind for them. 

Caspar’s dealings at the Sreng border are also worrying, to say the least. There should be more updates than are arriving. Hubert can’t say that he feels entirely trusting of Caspar, hot-headed boy turned General. But he supposes none of his friends are just children, anymore, are they? No, they were all practically war generals during the war. Caspar could handle this, whatever he was doing. 

As a gentle respite from his official reports, there’s a letter from von Varley territory. An invitation over for coffee. He knows the caffeine makes Bernadetta even more anxious than usual, but it's the thought of it. He puts care into his handwriting when penning his response, to be delivered overnight. Surely Ferdinand would give him a break from these ludicrous lessons to pay her a visit. 

And then, there’s still discontent at Fodlan’s Throat. And with the newly crowned King of Almyra armed with such intimate connections to the future members of the Alliance Roundtable, Hubert can only predict trouble for the future. 

The future Alliance Roundtable. Think about that.

The members of the Golden Deer House were going to be sitting there someday. Hubert’s future wife is likely to be sitting there, someday.

Pen tip on his mouth, he considers the idea.

Hilda Goneril sounded like the most obvious option, unfortunately. Good social standing, a good crest. Strong in battle, smart, with a degree of self-determination. Not self-determined enough for Hubert’s tastes, though. He remembers the woman slacking off every day in school. She had no passion, no motive, no drive. He tries to imagine himself voluntarily marrying a woman who isn’t willing to get her hands dirty, one who would prefer to just push the work off onto someone else. Ugh. He hopes that her laziness will mean that she decided a political marriage would be too much work for her. 

Then, there could be Lysithea von Ordelia. From what he gathered, it was unlikely that the girl had much time left to accomplish that which she wants to in life. While there’s some allure in the power she holds, and the hatred she must have over Those Who Slither in the Dark, Hubert doesn’t want to tie her to a life of battle if she doesn’t want it. She should choose her own path, just like Edelgard had. Hubert hopes that she isn’t the Roundtable’s choice, not wanting to take up her few precious remaining years. Anyway, from what he remembers of the girl, she cared far too much about sweets and far too little about the atrocities Hubert made in his everyday life.

He knew little about Margrave Edmund’s daughter. Quiet in school, with a dismal sort of energy about her. He supposes the girl wouldn’t get in his way much, and they would stay out of each other’s way to focus on their own work. Her education in Faith was somewhat interesting, though, and if Hubert had to marry a woman, he supposes a magic-user would be the best option. Perhaps they could teach each other new spells. That is the most enjoyable newlywed activity he can imagine with Marianne, unfortunately.

Then, there was Leonie Pinelli. Truth be told, her lack of a title interested him the most. The message that a marriage to her could send to the Empire would be fantastic. That titles, nobility, all of it, didn’t mean anything anymore. From what little he remembers of Leonie, he thinks she would like the sentiment as well, a fantastic opportunity to insult the very idea of nobility. He thinks he’d revel in seeing her accomplish it. There might be some fun to be found there, even. If he were to marry Leonie, they could laugh together about the ridiculous “courting” lessons Ferdinand was forcing onto him. 

Leonie was hardworking, loyal, independent. Had her own agenda, but one that could broadly align with his own. He can imagine them getting in friendly arguments and competitions of the sort he enjoys. He’s always viewed delicacy as a weakness, and he knows in a battle with a lance or sword, Leonie could slice him down in an instant. When it comes to a battle of wits, or a battle of stubbornness, he finds himself almost excited to imagine what the outcome would be. 

He turns his page, putting the report from former Alliance territory at the bottom of his stack, and turns his attention to the next letter, something about a possible uprising in Matues. He puts the idea to bed for now, then. Leonie would probably be the most suitable wife for him, if his future spouse was someone from his school days. Whether the Alliance Roundtable would pick a non-noble, he knows not, but he’s confident that the advantages of attending the Officer’s Academy will at least put her in the running. He briefly considers asking one of his spies stationed in Derdriu to ascertain her current whereabouts. For now, he lets his mind wander in his work.

* * *

Hubert von Vestra has always been a morning person, and at this exact moment, he regrets it. 

Despite the late hours he works into the night, he truly believes that the best work is done in the morning when dawn is just cresting and the moon still hangs in the sky. In those early hours of the morning, he can inspect Edelgard’s schedule for the day before she even awakens. He can make rounds about the castle, see that everything is in order, without being bothered by the hustle of the day. Sometimes, he’ll go to the market in the morning with the cook, help pick out meat and fish. And, of course, coffee always does taste best after just waking up.

For Hubert, mornings were a sacred time of clarity and calm. A peace after the storm of work and focus that was night. 

The last place he wants to be at six in the morning is standing in a stable in ill-fitting riding boots and pants far too tight for his preferences. Ferdinand is giving him a demonstration of the proper way to brush a horse, and Hubert doing a fantastic job of ignoring it. 

Here, standing by the horse’s side, so close he can feel heat radiating from its fur, the beast looks massive. It’s too large. Even at Hubert’s not insignificant height, he doesn’t like how close its back comes to his chest. It feels too long, somehow, if that was possible. 

From afar, Hubert quite likes the idea of horses. Beautiful, powerful beasts, with an elegance about them he long admired. With their long manes and powerful bodies, as a child, he’d always wanted a chance to feel the horse underneath him, share in that grace if only for a moment. But, as an adult, Hubert knows he is not elegant. Slippery, maybe, like an eel or a snake, but not elegant like a horse, and no amount of riding will change that. 

From this close, the horse is just large. So big. He knows of the number of stablehands that have died from a horse’s kick. Trained, professional riders still routinely die from falling—or worse, getting thrown—off a horse’s back. Hubert is no professional. Not even close. They’re easy to spook creatures, and Hubert, who has made it his life’s work to scare things, desperately does not want to provoke it.

“Your turn,” Ferdinand says and passes the brush into Hubert’s hands. Ah. Yes, brushing.

He inches a bit closer, ready to mimic the small circles Ferdinand had brushed into the horse’s coat. Before the brush can even touch her, though, Ferdinand makes a tutting noise. 

“That will not do. Say hello to her first before you put your hands all over her. Be a gentleman, Hubert.”

“You want me to… talk to it?”

“Precisely. And her,” Ferdinand corrects and brushes the dust from his gloves. Everything is dusty here, and it smells absolutely horrible.

“The horse. You want me to talk to the horse.” 

“And they called me the dense one in school. Yes. Her name is Peppercorn.”

Hubert walks to the horse’s, ah, Peppercorn’s front. Ferdinand had told him not to look at her directly head-on but instead stand a step to her right or left. Her big black eyes are focused away from him, distracted by the movements of the other horses in the stables. 

“Ahem,” Hubert coughs quietly to get her attention. “Hello, Peppercorn.” 

Peppercorn doesn’t spare him even a passing glance. He looks back to Ferdinand, lost. 

“Touch her. You are never going to be able to ride her if you are too afraid to even touch her.” 

Hubert swallows and reaches a hand out to touch the side of her face. She twitches when his gloves make connection, but he forces himself not to move his hand away, letting it rest lightly on her face. 

“Say hello again. Introduce yourself!” Ferdinand sounds like he’s enjoying himself too much, which Hubert can already predict will be a theme of these lessons. Well, with Hubert’s own track record, he can’t complain about anyone having fun at the expense of others.

Peppercorn’s coat is brown with a reddish undertone, and a few white spots on her snout. She wasn’t Ferdinand’s standard horse, Hubert had been told while half-listening, but a much calmer one that Ferdinand says will fit well for a beginner. Even then, she still feels too big, too tall, and as much as he’s trying to ignore it, the knot in his throat rises because in a few minutes he’ll be getting on her back. Her eyes look back at him, and he immediately wants to look away. Instead, he stands his ground.

“Hello, Peppercorn,” he says, pushing the suspicion out of his brain that this talking-to-horses nonsense was just an invention of Ferdinand’s meant to humiliate him. “My name is Hubert. I’m going to be, um. Riding you today.”

“Good. Now that was not so difficult, correct?”

Finally, Ferdinand lets Hubert brush the horse, a task that passes proportionally swiftly to all the fuss Ferdinand made over approaching her. While Ferdinand secures the saddle onto Peppercorn’s back, Hubert flattens his hair with a helmet and wraps padding around his knees and elbows. He hates this. He hates everything about this. Facing the horse while just brushing her was horrible enough, but. Riding her? It doesn’t seem possible. 

But before he knows it, they’re in the fenced clearing outside, and Ferdinand has set up a mounting block by Peppercorn’s left side.

The mounting block is barely more than half a meter off the ground, but something about the fact that the next step is the horse’s back makes even that small distance feel massive. When he puts his foot on the first step, he feels unstable, like he’s already about to topple over.

“Must I really?” he asks aloud, and his voice sounds quiet behind the beating of his heart in his ears. 

“You must. Horsemanship is one of the most acknowledged symbols of noble pedigree. We might be changing the importance of the nobility, but courting has remained largely the same and tradition is necessary for a political arrangement such as yours. It is vitally important that you at least learn to trot.” Ferdinand stands to the horse’s right side, one gloved hand holding fast to a rope fashioned around the horse’s neck, the other on the base of the horse’s spine. 

“But, I…” There really aren’t any excuses to give. Not a single one comes to mind, other than the intense fact that he dearly does not want to do this. He already feels dizzy, just from standing on the block and imagining the next steps. 

“Up. Grip the saddle horn. I am holding her steady.” 

Hubert lets his hands find the knob attached to Peppercorn’s saddle. 

“Left foot in the stirrup first,” Ferdinand commands him, and Hubert’s leg feels a similar consistency to pudding as he places the heel of his boot into the leather stirrup. The knot in his throat has only grown, and he finds it hard to breathe. Perhaps he does need glasses, he thinks. The ground looks so far away. “Now, swing yourself over. Not too hard.” 

Yes, too hard. 

Hubert looks at the horse’s saddle. Looks down at his own foot. 

No, this could be done. Just the simple act of mounting a horse. He’s seen it dozens of times before battle. Easy. It could be done. 

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, releases it. Opens his eyes again. 

“We are going to miss breakfast at this rate, Hubert.”

“I’m getting to it.” He takes another breath. Swings his right leg up and over Peppercorn’s back. 

And then, suddenly, he’s sat on top of her, her saddle between his legs. For a fraction of a second, he marvels at how fast the process actually went before he realizes. The ground looks even farther away now. Immediately he looks in front of him instead of down. No, that was worse. He looks back down at the ground in front of him.

“Very good!” Ferdinand exclaims, and Hubert nearly shushes him. It was too loud, what if he startled Peppercorn and she—oh, flames, this was not going to work. “Now, reposition yourself on the saddle a bit, not so stiff.”

“I want to get off.”

“You just got on.”

“I want to get off.” Hubert closes his eyes. Yes, it’s better when he can’t see. 

“You are doing great, Hubert. Do you really want to give up now?”

Hubert replies without hesitation. “Yes.”

“Well, that is too bad,” Ferdinand says, and Hubert’s opens his eyes just so he can bug them out at Ferdinand. _What?_ “We are going to go for a loop around the ring.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Irrelevant,” Ferdinand replies, and then the horse moves underneath Hubert and he feels the world tip around him. He shuts his eyes again, tightly. “Now, hold on,” Ferdinand says, and then, slightly quieter: “You can keep your eyes closed for today if you want.”

And then, the horse is walking forward, body swaying from right to left underneath Hubert with each step. He holds onto the reins as tightly and securely as he’s able. 

He’s not sure if closing his eyes actually improves the experience any, but it’s easier to curse under his breath the whole way with his eyes shut. He swears that Ferdinand is leading them as slowly as humanly possible, or even taking him around the fenced enclosure multiple times because time stretches on as severely as during a boring, peaceful, diplomatic negotiation. Hubert can feel his heartbeat in his chest and his nails bite into his palms even through his gloves. 

He’s not sure who Ferdinand is speaking to, him or the horse, when his voice comes quietly and comforting from a few feet away, where he leads them both with a rope. “Very good. We are almost there.” 

And then, a minute or an hour later, Peppercorn stops moving underneath him. Hubert blinks his eyes open. He shut them tightly enough that when light returns his world dances with fuzzy purple and black spots, as bright as if he had just cast Miasma. 

Ferdinand stands to the left of the horse and looks up at him with a small, genuine smile on his face. Hubert can’t discern what the smile is for—if not for its very real delight, he’d assume Ferdinand was mocking him again—and doesn’t bother considering it, because—amazing, the ground was just as far away as it had been beforehand. He feels a little sick, he realizes. 

“Now, for the dismount. It’s exactly the opposite as mounting wa—”

Before Ferdinand can give him any further instructions, Hubert swings his right leg over Peppercorn’s body. He cannot wait even a second longer to feel solid ground underneath his feet again. His right foot touches the dirt, and, yes. This. This is safety. And then, quite suddenly, he feels a burning in his left calf as he realizes that in his haste to get one foot on the ground, his left foot is somehow still secured to the stirrup. Every warm-up exercise he slacked on during training gets its revenge as his inflexible body screams at the stretch, and no, his body was not supposed to bend like that. He wiggles the foot and realizes that somehow, exactly how he cannot comprehend, he’s gotten stuck. Perhaps this is how he’ll die. 

Ferdinand’s hand lifts his boot—ouch—from the stirrup and settles both of Hubert’s feet down onto the ground. Hubert hunches over, massaging his upper thigh where the stretch hurts most. 

He’s expecting Ferdinand to reprimand him in some way. Tell him that things like that wouldn’t happen if he just listened, or some other self-important horseshit. But, instead, Ferdinand’s voice is careful and much gentler than he expected. 

“We will work on the dismount. In sooth, I was expecting it to go worse.”

* * *

After a very thorough washing, lunch, and two meetings with Edelgard, he reconvenes with Ferdinand for tea. 

Afternoon tea wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for the two of them. It began during the war, but the ritual continued even after swords stopped clashing. They’d meet to discuss any manner of things over tea, coffee, and whatever random baked goods Ferdinand managed to procure from places of unknown origin. Some days, they would discuss reconstruction plans, their arguments from the negotiation table following them to the gazebo in the gardens. But more often, especially as of late, the conversation would turn to other, more trivial matters. They’d talk about their days, or whatever was currently frustrating them. New restaurants reopening in Enbarr. One of Bernadetta’s new books. The weather, even, sometimes. 

Despite already being the Great Tree Moon, humidity sticks in the air and makes Hubert sweat under his clothes. Only a few days ago, it had been cold, but the weather can’t make up its mind, for today, the sun beats down in hot rays. Even the flowers are peeking their crowns up too soon. It feels almost as though the weather is changing early just for the occasion.

All for this tea. This lesson in _tea_.

In front of where Hubert sits—as properly as he can manage, though his lower back already aches—there are five tea tins, but only one teapot. No coffee, of course—for some reason Ferdinand von Aegir still deemed tea more noble than coffee. Silly. 

The treat of the day was a flaky pastry with an off-white cream and blueberries fixed on top. There were only two, but they look big and sweet enough that Hubert doesn’t foresee himself wanting to eat even half. 

“Now,” Ferdinand puts a hand on top of one of the tea tins. “If I had more time to teach you, there would be much more tea than just these. It would be customary to train you to be able to recognize type and region of origin based on taste alone, but, well. For now, the basics.”

The basics seemed to include a thorough overview of different tea types. Hubert nods along, his arms folded smugly, looking down at the tins as Ferdinand touches each of them to explain the varieties.

Didn’t Ferdinand understand that Hubert had to know at least something about tea varieties after so many afternoons with him? Black teas, green teas, herbal blends, it’s not like these phrases are entirely new to Hubert. He’d bought Ferdinand tea seven times over the course of the past year—for flames’ sake, the Bergamot Lavender tea tin that Ferdinand is flailing about now was a gift from Hubert in the first place. He’s talked to more prissy tea-salesmen in town than he would ever care for, and each present was a tea he thought Ferdinand would genuinely enjoy. Hubert didn’t just get gifts to give them to people—he didn’t even give birthday gifts. No, if he intended to give someone something, it had to be something he put thought into.

So, as Ferdinand waves around the Lavender Bergamot, lying about how black tea’s caffeine content is on par with coffee’s, Hubert can’t help but wonder if Ferdinand has forgotten that it was Hubert who had given him that tin.

He has only given him seven different teas. Hubert can only imagine Ferdinand’s collection is unnecessarily vast, and any new additions might blend in with the rest. Maybe Hubert should feel proud that his selection was so to Ferdinand’s tastes that he’d forgotten it was a gift in the first place.

He focuses his attention back on Ferdinand’s words again. “We cannot try every tea in the world, though you know I wish we could. When it comes to herbal teas alone, there are infinite combinations! Hm, mayhaps it would be worthwhile to set aside time for a lesson on herbal teas…” Hubert rolls his eyes and ignores him again.

But then, also. Hubert had given him _seven_ teas over the course of a year. Seven. The only person he’s given anywhere close to seven gits is Bernadetta, and that’s merely because he enjoys discovering new types of carnivorous plants to feed various body parts to as well. 

So maybe he’s slightly insulted that Ferdinand doesn’t remember his gifts, or even thinks that Hubert doesn’t know what green tea is. 

“I have selected these five teas as the quintessential teas of their types. If you can learn to brew these, then you will be well on your way to knowing how to brew any sort of tea.”

“I don’t see the reason for this. You heat up the water, steep the tea, and serve. Greens and herbals don’t get milk. Sugar is a matter of personal preference. Done.” Hubert’s been to enough afternoon teas. He’s picked up at least a few things. “I’m not stupid, Ferdinand. I’ve seen tea get prepared before.”

“Oh, so you are under the impression you know everything already?” Ferdinand asks, accusatorily. That was a bad sign. Ugh, this was going to be miserable.

“I have had the displeasure of seeing you make tea hundreds of times, Ferdinand. Do you think I don’t watch you do it?”

“Oh, well, I—” Ferdinand’s rebuttal isn’t nearly as fast as Hubert would have thought. “I...” He pauses, chewing on his lip. “I… had not thought you would have remembered. If I knew I was under such close scrutiny, I may have behaved differently.” 

Differently?

“Nonetheless!” Ferdinand exclaims, louder than necessary, though that wasn’t unusual for him. “There is still much you must learn. Do you know how long chamomile must be brewed compared to ginger tea? What about an herbal blend between them? Do you know exactly how many times one should stir a cup, and how to perform the task silently? Do you know the precise angle at which your pinkie is to be raised?” 

Hubert lowers his voice to a tone he usually reserves only for threats. “I don’t know any of that, and frankly don’t understand why the stars anyone would ever need to.”

“Why, it is important!” Ferdinand exclaims, incredulous. “Are you not beginning to understand that? All of this is important! What manner in which you present yourself to a crowd, to an esteemed individual, will directly correlate to other’s perception of your worth! Proper etiquette was, and still is in many places, considered a hallmark of quality breeding. The way one, for instance, can brew a pot of tea correctly, is directly indicative of the depth of their character, and the worthiness of their nobility” He takes a breath in, exhales. “Now, I would never inflict this sort of education on someone who did not want it. I am not sure what to think about the fact it was inflicted on me in the first place. But it is undeniable that the way you present yourself to society in this deal will not only reflect upon yourself but on the Empire as a whole. It is—and I speak not only as a teacher and friend but as the Prime Minister—absolutely imperative that the Alliance has a positive view of these marriage negotiations throughout their entirety.”

Hubert’s hands are still in his lap, where he’d been directed to keep them during their moronic ‘how to sit’ lesson yesterday. He feels silly with them just sitting there on his legs, so he twists them together under the table. “I don’t disagree with anything you said. I merely…” He lets himself ponder for a moment. “I don’t think that the angle at which my pinkie is raised is going to cause my fiancée to call off a marriage fully dictated by politics.” 

Ferdinand shakes his head, and Hubert watches his hair, curling with the humidity, move against his shoulders. “I am not arguing about this, Hubert. Listen.” Hubert notices that Ferdinand’s hands weren’t on his lap at all, but against the table. Hypocrite. “You agreed to Edelgard that you would go along with my lessons, did you not?”

“I did,” Hubert says, and then, as he sees Ferdinand’s mouth opening to speak: “And I have been! I’ve gone along with every frivolous thing you’ve demanded! And it’s barely even been a day!” Hubert keeps his anger quiet, a hiss as if the empty gardens could listen in.

“Correct. It has only been a day. It has only been a day, and you are already throwing a fit over the simple act of preparing tea.” Ferdinand leans forwards. He actually, without a hint of irony, puts his elbow on the table. “If you cannot put up with this for a day, I shudder to think how quickly you will be filing for a divorce.” Ferdinand takes one of the tins from the table, and carefully uses a spoon to transfer a precise measurement of leaves into the strainer of the teapot. “You will not let this marriage fall through just because your pride dictates you're too stubborn to learn something new. Not if I can help it." He pours water from a pitcher, sweating in the afternoon sun even in the shade of the gazebo, into the teapot, and the leaves rise before he tamps them down with the tea kettle lid. “Are we in agreement?”

“If we must be.”

“Splendid.” Ferdinand shoves the teapot across the table towards Hubert. “Here in Adrestia, we warm our tea in the pot. In some Alliance territories, it is customary to use another kettle to heat the water, and then pour the leaves into that. We will get to that eventually.” Ferdinand’s tone is terse, short, which Hubert supposes is only matching his own. Even years after their antagonistic relationship at the Academy, he still feels a slight thrill at the frustration in Ferdinand’s voice, the knowledge that he’s cracked that noble demeanor. “Now, this is a mint green tea.”

“Ah, so no milk,” Hubert says, recalling Ferdinand’s careful movements when preparing this blend in the past.

“Very good. So you were listening. What temperature should green tea be warmed to?” 

Hubert looks at the pot in front of them. It’s not porcelain like the glassware of their cups and saucers, but metal, the bottom warped from years of heating spells. Different types of teas had to be heated to different temperatures?

Ferdinand sighs again. “So you were not listening. Eight-two degrees. How long should green tea be steeped?” 

Hubert keeps his eyes locked on the pot. A guess would be better than nothing. “Eight minutes?”

“Hubert,” Ferdinand says. He’s clearly disappointed, but there’s a tone of gentleness back in his voice.

“I didn’t know it was that important.”

“It is.” Ferdinand circles his wrist twice, building up magical energy and then presses four fingers against the side of the pot. “If you overheat some teas, especially green tea, you bruise the leaves. Only a minute for green. Any more will produce an overabundance of tannins, which will give the tea a bitter flavor. You will find a similar effect if it is over-brewed.” 

“What if one prefers it to be more bitter?” Hubert says, thinking about Ferdinand’s common complaints about his own coffee press. 

“Why, then, Hubert, one has no taste.” 

“My, my. You have a tongue on you today,” Hubert says as he adjusts his teacup on its saucer. It was a nice set, but not one of the ones he’d purchased for Ferdinand himself.

“Excuse me for being on edge after seeing my best friend almost brained himself getting off a horse this morning.”

Best friend? Is that what they were? Best friends? 

Hubert’s never been one for friends. The friendships in his life had been few and far between. As a child, there had really only been Edelgard, and. Well, Ferdinand had been there too, he supposes. Two years younger than Hubert, Ferdinand has always come off as pimply and shrill. He had been rude and always spoke to Hubert at length about things he didn’t care the slightest bit about. Hubert’s frustration with the pudgy boy had been cemented into his head by nearly day one. He’d never considered them to be friends until much, much later. 

He’d never considered Edelgard his friend either, though for vastly different reasons. She was a constant companion in his life, but the definition of the word “friend” fell short. Friend, in Hubert’s mind, implied something close to equality. Edelgard, and the dream she stood for, towered far higher than his own measly ambitions. He was more loyal to her than a friend could ever be to another, he thinks. Whatever they were, what she meant to him, it went beyond friendship.

Even back in the Officer’s Academy, he and Edelgard both knew that their time there was limited. There was no point in making friends if one would just have to slice them down in battle in a few months if they didn’t agree with the Empire’s plan. 

But in the end, he’d made friends in those Academy days, and during the war after, whether he preferred it or not. Dorothea must have deemed him a friend someday silently and afterward stuck herself to him like a particularly stubborn barnacle. Linhardt has never called him friend, but their crest-related conversations in the library at Garreg Mach spoke to a level of familiarity closer than acquaintances. Petra called everyone her friend as soon as she learned the word, and that was that. Caspar had loudly called him a friend in the dining hall once after a battle, hand coming frighteningly close to slapping Hubert’s derriere. Bernadetta has asked him only this year, in a formal written letter, if he would be her friend. That one was what touched him the most, and his icy exterior could no longer withstand the heat of his friends’ affection. So yes. He would admit he had friends now, as dangerous as that was in his line of work. 

And then there was Ferdinand. They’d called each other friends countless times before, but Hubert cannot remember when they started. He supposes there’s much he’s forgotten that happened during the war, but that particular scene he wishes he could recall. Friend. And now, somehow, under his nose, best friend. 

“That should be good,” Ferdinand says, voice breaking Hubert from his thoughts. 

Had it been a minute already?

His eyes refocus from the middle distance to see Ferdinand stand up as he pours the tea for the both of them. “For teaching purposes, I suggest tasting with no sugar and then adding if it suits your tastes. I know you drink your coffee without it.” 

He picks up the porcelain cup, expecting a lesson on which degree to hold his pinky finger.

“Oh, saints. I nearly forgot. Put that down.”

Flames. He was so, so close. So close to just drinking the damned tea and getting this over with. He sets the cup back down on its saucer. 

“It is a rule I often break, but a rule nevertheless. When consuming food or drink, gloves are to be removed.” Ferdinand has already begun removing his gloves, finger by finger. 

Hubert feels his blood starting to go cold, a shock against the humid day and residual energy of the heating spell lingering in the air. “My gloves?”

“They are supposed to be worn at all times except for when dancing, washing, sleeping, shaving, and consuming food and drink.” Ferdinand fully tugs off his left glove and begins to remove the right. “Ah, there are a few more instances in Leicester culture but—”

“I don’t want to,” Hubert says, his glancing down at his own gloved hands.

Ferdinand pauses, his hands stopping their task, and then, in that gentle, disappointed voice he’s becoming so familiar with: “Hubert.”

“I said I don’t want to.” 

“I heard what you said, but. Did we not just have a conversation about how you are going to have to do things you would prefer not to?” 

That had been the takeaway, yes. But he looks down at his hands, imagining if his gloves were invisible. The way that his hands had been stained in purple and black hues, vibrant as fresh bruises, magic dyed deep like oil paint that won’t rub off. That wasn’t a sight for outside eyes. “I don’t want to,” he says, again. “I’m not going to budge on that.” 

Ferdinand looks at him for a few more seconds. Hubert can feel his eyes on him. What expression would be on his face if Hubert were to look up now? Frustration? Disappointment? Pity? When he finally speaks, Ferdinand’s voice is as gentle as it usually is when he says Hubert’s name. “You will not budge on it today. We still have almost a month in front of us to get used to the idea.”

Well… it could have gone worse.

Ferdinand’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet as he leans forward, elbows resting on the table again. “For today, then, I will keep my gloves on as well.” And he smiles. 

Hubert watches as slowly and carefully, Ferdinand puts both of his gloves back on. 

Then, Ferdinand picks up his porcelain cup by the handle, back to behaving as boisterously as always. “Now, in the Empire, your pinkie should be held at approximately a forty-five-degree angle, but in the Alliance...” Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be shorter, I promise! Look forward to a lunch date, dancing, and a good old-fashioned straight razor shave.


	3. Great Tree Moon, Week 1, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lunch date, dancing, and a good old-fashion razor shave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all of your comments fuel me so much, damn. thank you all so much! also, thanks to everyone on twitter who voted in my poll to decide if ferdinand would have big hands or small hands. i want to have more twitter polls about stuff like that in the future!
> 
> as always, the biggest thanks to my beta, [GuiltyBystanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyBystanders/pseuds/GuiltyBystanders). Also on Twitter [@guiltybystandr](https://twitter.com/aguiltybystandr). you wouldn't believe just how much she polishes these bad boys up.

At the tea lessons of the following days, Ferdinand doesn’t ask Hubert to take off his gloves again. Instead, when Hubert applies a heating charm to the teapot, he’s allowed to do it with four gloved fingers. Unsurprisingly, he overheats it every time, according to Ferdinand. Hubert can’t taste how it’s more bitter than the first day’s green tea, but nods along, pretending that he’s learned anything. 

There are a lot of things he needs to pretend he’s learned. Ferdinand teaches precisely how to arrange his cutlery to signal particular messages to waiters—that a glass needs to be refilled or a plate is ready to be taken away, some of the more inane reasons to send a coded message Hubert has encountered. He learns the names of various famous Alliance musicians who he abruptly forgets. At one point, Ferdinand gives him a handwritten list in impeccable calligraphy categorizing when to hold open doors, pull out chairs, shake hands. Ferdinand foists Hubert a child’s flute and teaches him nursery tunes to “encourage musical development.” The horseback riding lessons never cease, and Hubert each morning still refuses to open his eyes. Tea lessons take place every day, and today is no exception.

Today, they eat small cookies flavored with cinnamon, which makes for a terrible combination with the mint of the tea. The weather is far more agreeable to Huber than last week’s humidity and warmth, grey skies with a gentle wind blowing throughout the grounds of the castle. 

Hubert has always disliked the Great Tree Moon for this very reason. One day, the weather would be that of winter, the next, the miserable signs of spring and summer would rear their ugly heads. He doesn’t mind the look of the flowers, but their pollen makes his nose stuffy and his head ache. He hates the way the sun beat down, insufferable in the many layers of long-sleeved, dark clothing he preferred. Under the blazing sun, the very air itself became as oppressively heavy as the sauna that the professor had browbeaten him into sitting in far more often than he pleased in those Academy days. As much as he doesn’t want it to be the summer yet, he despises the way it seems like the weather of early spring can’t make up its damn mind.

Ferdinand likes hot weather. They’ve had this argument—ah, conversation—before, many a time. Ferdinand maintains he likes being outside, that out in a beautifully kept garden under a blue sky is his ideal setting. He likes going to the sea, apparently, an activity that Hubert has not once indulged in for the sake of pleasure. Sometimes, Hubert would spot Ferdinand in his smallclothes lying on a terrace, soaking in the sun’s rays. Hubert burns if he’s outside for more than fifteen minutes, and yet, Ferdinand can stay out there for hours, coming back with a healthy glow. 

Hubert wishes it would stay as overcast and chilly as this afternoon, but, the almanac had said it would be a particularly hot Great Tree Moon this year, so he doesn’t get his hopes up. He’ll suffer in his dark clothes.

“So, are we to have these lessons every day?” Hubert asks as he finishes a cookie. At least they weren’t horribly sweet. Actually, he thinks he prefers the cinnamon to the mint, and would rather leave his cup on the saucer—with the handle facing the spout of the teapot, of course, lest Ferdinand makes another fuss about the importance of the angles to a tea spread—than have to force it down while remembering the angle to hold his pinky at. The crumbs from the cookies cling to his gloves, but he doesn’t mind it. His gloves have definitely touched worse.

“Tea lessons less often further down the line, once you have proved that you know the basics.” Ferdinand doesn’t look at him when he speaks, instead keeping his eyes on the cup while he takes a small sip. A piece of Leicester politeness, apparently, to always look at your food when eating it instead of at the person you’re talking to. Ferdinand himself admitted that it was downright rude by Adrestian standards, but what could be done?

“I don’t mean tea lessons, specifically. These lessons, in general. Do I ever get a day off?”

“Hubert, it is only your fourth day.”

“Fifth,” Hubert says. Ferdinand shoots him a glare, breaking Leicester tea etiquette. Hah. Hubert feels a little glee from that but doesn’t let it show on his face. “If you count the sitting lessons.”

“Which have not paid off in the slightest. Put your shoulders back.” Ferdinand puts his cup down on the saucer and pulls a face at the taste of the tea. Hubert couldn’t have brewed it _that_ badly, he thinks. “Do you not have enough time to get your work done?” 

“Lady Edelgard kept to her word. My workload is dreadfully small. I can’t imagine how we’re going to move forward in…” He trails off. Even though Ferdinand was filled in on the situation with Those Who Slither in the Dark and they seemed to be alone in the courtyard, he could never be too careful. The walls have ears, they say, and the topiary bushes were no exception. “...my duties like this.”

“Marriage is your duty now. It is as simple as that.” 

“I have other duties.” 

“Like what? Hubert, this is your priority from now on. Your war has waited years, and Edelgard herself said it could wait another few months.” Well, there goes any attempt to speak in code.

“Just…” he casts about wildly for other duties only he could fulfill, coming up short. “Other things! All of my days can’t be spent sipping tea and riding horses.”

Ferdinand heaves a tired sigh. Even with his resolve, Hubert understands where he’s coming from. They can’t have this argument every day, even though both of them were plenty ready for it.

Hubert chews his lip while he decides what to say next. Why is he treating this as something to be embarrassed about? Especially after Ferdinand admitted they were best friends a few days ago. Surely, Ferdinand would understand the rare importance of what he was about to say. “Bernadetta invited me over for coffee tomorrow.” Simple. And who could turn Bernadetta down when she made a conscious effort to be social? A sadist, that’s who, and as close as Hubert gets to one, well. He can’t stand the thought of crushing Bernadetta’s hopes like that, not after the length of time he’s known her. Ferdinand, like everyone else from their school days, has to understand that. “I haven’t seen her in a few months.”

Ferdinand’s expression softens, and then he has the decency to look a little embarrassed. “Neither have I.” 

“You understand that—”

Ferdinand speaks over him. “When Bernadetta asks for attention—” 

“You have to come.”

At this, Ferdinand laughs. His laugh changed after he lost his noble title. Before, it was tittering and insipid. Now his laughs come from the belly, his voice always surprisingly deep when he didn’t force it higher. It’s a good laugh, and Hubert finds himself smiling as well. Much like in the council room, they can switch from arguing to collaborating in a few short seconds. It’s what makes them such an effective legislative team. 

“Tomorrow afternoon, I had dancing lessons planned. And more time with Peppercorn,” Ferdinand says. Ah, a narrow escape from more horseback riding. “Peppercorn is always here, you cannot get out of riding lessons, but I am not sure about the musicians I hired for the dancing lessons. I did that two days ago and do not know if they would be able to reschedule.”

“Dancing lessons can get pushed back.”

Ferdinand mopes for a second, lips downturned. Then, he shakes his head. “No, no, we will figure out something.” Of course, dancing lessons would be something Ferdinand would be adamant over. Hubert remembers how for nearly a full month, all Ferdinand would talk about was how the professor had chosen him for the White Heron Cup, and how he was taking dancing lessons, going to tea parties. Of course, Ferdinand had lost, rather dismally at that, but years later over wine Ferdinand had confessed that while he felt horrible about losing at the time, his interest in heavy armor far outweighed his love of dancing so all’s well that ends well. “We do not necessarily need the musicians, actually. It may be better if we practice first without them! So they are not waiting for your bumbling feet.”

Hubert opens his mouth to say something, an insulted objection perhaps, but Ferdinand speaks right over him. Hubert lets him monologue because when Ferdinand got that fire in his eye and that excitement in his voice, it was easier to just let him have his fun. Hubert eats another cookie as he watches Ferdinand talk.

“Well! Bernadetta is a woman of fine upbringing. I know as a certainty that she knows much about etiquette and courting, more than I even. While I do not think you are nearly ready for polite society presently, she may be extremely helpful in teaching you what you need to learn. She could, oh, I could—” Ferdinand begins to gesture with his hands as he builds momentum in his monologue, and Hubert notes the precise moment when he puts his elbows on the table. This makes seven times since the start of their lessons that Ferdinand has put his elbows on the table. Hubert is keeping a mental tally in an attempt to stay sane.“Today’s lessons will be entirely changed. We will bump up dancing to today, of course, as you will need much practice in that I am sure, but. We should talk about clothes, hygiene, oh, goddess, you do not even know how to make proper conversation. Hubert, we really have our work cut out for us.”

Hubert eats his second cookie silently, even after Ferdinand stops speaking. He thought that his visit with Bernadetta might mean some sort of day off. Alas. At least he could avoid having to finish the mint tea, now cold. 

Hubert swallows the last bit of cookie and Ferdinand claps his hands together. “Now, finish your tea, we must get going.” 

Hubert miserably looks down at his cup, prepares for the worst, and drains the glass, trying to ignore the unpleasant mixture of mint and cinnamon on his tongue while Ferdinand grabs him by the arm to whisk him away to whatever torment he has planned first.

* * *

The first item on Ferdinand’s nobility torture itinerary for the day takes them outside the castle, into the city, to a small restaurant on a back street. It looks like the sort of place Hubert would only enter with the intention of murdering a high-class target, not somewhere he would give patronage to himself. The sort of place that’s small enough that the only reason it’s not full is either that the food is abysmal or the prices are high enough that no one could actually afford it. 

Ferdinand strolls in like he owns the place, of course. Ugh, no matter how much Hubert and Edelgard managed to suppress the worst aspects of his nobility, his sense of entitlement stubbornly remained. 

Inside is dim. Why, for all that is terrible in this world, were rich people obsessed with rooms being so dark you could barely see the other people? Hubert prefers the darkness himself, of course—shadowy rooms like this were perfect for slipping through unnoticed—but he’d always thought he was an outlier in that until he noticed how many of his richer targets he killed over candle-lit dinners. He won’t complain generally, as it makes his job easier, but when eating out himself he can’t understand the appeal of low lighting. He knows better than anyone what exactly could be lurking in the darkened corners. He needs to squint to see the interior of the restaurant. It’s practically empty, only two other parties in the room apart from them. It was a little early for lunch, Hubert thinks, but not horribly. 

Even in the low light of the restaurant, though, he doesn’t miss Ferdinand’s smile as he shakes the hand of one of the waiters, who headed towards them with surprising speed.

“Minister von Aegir! You didn’t tell us you were visiting!”

“I hope Dustin does not mind a surprise?” 

“Definitely not. Let me seat you and I’ll go get him.”

Hubert’s eyes dart between the two of them, wondering what in the stars’ names was going on, but keeps his mouth shut for now. Ferdinand is never rude to waitstaff, something true of even before he was humbled, but Hubert has also never seen him so friendly with one. Wondering about it was far too much effort than it was worth. That was a good summary of all of this nonsense as a whole, really. All of the lessons. More effort than they were worth. What was his new wife going to do if he put his napkin in his lap instead of over his shoulder? Divorce him? Kill him? Now, that could actually be fun.

They’re sat down at an already set table with three largish candles merrily melting away on it. Hubert sits down at the seat closest to the wall, old tactics. It was better to see all of the room, rather than have one’s back to any potential assailants. He squints down at the menu in front of him.

“Hubert,” Ferdinand says, still standing.

“What is it now?” 

Ferdinand cocks one hip, putting his weight on one foot. So much for all his talk of proper posture. “If you were out on a date with your new fiancée, would you leave them standing to pull their chair out for themselves?” 

_Yes,_ Hubert thinks but keeps his mouth shut as he stands and pulls back Ferdinand’s chair. Ferdinand daintily lowers himself into his seat. When he’s done, Hubert pointedly collapses back into his, mentally daring him to comment on the lack of grace. 

“Really, I thought that you would have learned that at very least after following the princess around for so long.” 

“She’s no damsel in distress, Ferdinand. She never has been.” Edelgard didn’t make him do any of that silly stuff, had never expected it. There were a few things he chose to do— a sign of respect for her efforts, not her bloodline—but she preferred to feel self-sufficient and in control of things. At least, she had until the professor had shown up. 

Ferdinand pushes on before any darker thoughts can properly start stewing in Hubert’s head. “Now, here we will practice our table manners, and I will give a short example on how to make polite conversation. I thought that getting out of the castle would do us some g—Ah, Dustin!” And then Ferdinand is getting out of his seat again to shake hands with a man who must be Dustin.

Dustin is young, maybe a few years younger than them, tall and skinny, with short brownish, curly hair. Someone who looks just unremarkable enough to be suspicious. “Ferdinand! You need to get better at sending someone before you come!”

Hah, like the castle had anyone to send anymore. Hubert made sure that there was no more extraneous staff at the castle for politicians to bully into doing their errands for them. 

“And miss a chance to keep you on your toes? Not for the world, Dustin.”

“Ah, but this is the first I’ve seen you come in for a lunch date instead of dinner,” Dustin says, glancing between the two of them. Perhaps Hubert’s bloodsoaked wartime reputation has persisted more enduringly than he anticipated.

“Is that Aoibheann new?” Ferdinand asks abruptly, and then they’re nattering on about something or other about a Faerghan painting on the wall. Hubert drinks from the glass of water on the table and squints at the menu again. When did his vision get so awful? 

Ferdinand sits down again eventually, and the waiter… manager… owner… whoever he was, Dustin, leaves.

“He said that he would have the kitchen cook us up something special, so no need to order.” 

“Do you know every foppish waiter in the city?”

“Only the pretty ones,” Ferdinand laughs, and then keeps talking, quickly. “No, I helped Dustin out a bit when this place got destroyed by the war. A pet project of mine, actually. His uncle was a noble and a particularly corrupt one at that, so the citizens set fire to the place.” He plays with one of the curls that fall over his shoulder while he talks, threading the end between his fingers.

Ah. Hubert knew about that. The rioting in Enbarr following Edelgard’s uprising. He remembers thinking it beautiful at moments, even if chaotic. It wasn’t his first time seeing such violence, far from it. He’s always known that the general populace had the ability to do horrible things to other people—every living person had that capability inside of them when you get down to it. But it did feel different seeing people stoned to death by the friendly merchants selling you fruit the day before, seeing noble blood running down the cobblestone streets. At the time, Hubert had felt vindicated—it had been a sure sign that the people were as against the nobility system as the new Emperor was. Now, Hubert still thinks it was a necessary step forwards for the citizens of Adrestia, but he’s more willing to acknowledge the damage done to less deserving victims.

Of course, there were commoners out for Ferdinand’s head at that time as well. “How did you help them?”

“Ah, well. It is all in publicity, is it not? During the war, it was difficult, but even one loyal customer makes a difference. And, well, the pay for being a commander was not too shabby.” 

Hubert supposes that was right. He himself has no idea what to do with all of the money he’s made over the years. He and Edelgard pay the cooks and the gardeners and all the rest of the castle staff, of course, but. There was still the pay Edelgard handed him every month for his position as Minister of the Imperial Household—less than a fraction of what his father had been paid for the job and yet still so much—sitting in his drawers. He had few hobbies, this time devoted to his Emperor and their secret war, and Reason and Faith didn’t have the same cost of equipment upkeep that physical skills did. But the money that Ferdinand made as a commander didn’t come until almost a year into the start of the war. Perhaps he should leave this line of questioning alone—this was a topic that they still skirted around speaking about even after their years of friendship—but Hubert finds himself unable to let go.

“Ferdinand, you know as well as I do that you were struggling to keep yourself fed after we brought down your family,” Hubert pushes and instantly regrets it.

Ferdinand’s answering smile is wide and brassy and fake. This wasn’t the sort of rise Hubert liked getting out of him. It was fun to get him riled up, angry, and passionate enough to express his feelings, etiquette be fucked. Ferdinand, for all his veneer of propriety, liked arguing with Hubert like that too. But when Ferdinand went pleasantly blank-faced, hiding his frustration behind a veil of politeness, Hubert knew that meant he hit a nerve, poked a wound still too fresh. Hubert’s job is to prod people’s weak spots, but it’s not a skill he wants to turn on his friends. So, he shuts his mouth, cursing his own curiosity. 

“And Dustin and the fine workers at this establishment were kind enough to feed me whatever they could spare in their early days,” he says mildly, voice pleasant and even. His light tone makes it sound like Dustin had offered him the first claim on a particularly nice bottle of wine, not fed him table scraps when he was starving. 

There’s something distant and untouchable in his eyes, a place that Hubert cannot reach. Hubert has never been one to advocate for “talking things out” or other such sentimental drivel, but he can’t help but wish for a second that they had addressed this part of their pasts previously. How Hubert had directly caused Ferdinand such suffering, had delighted in it even, and how he still considers it to have been necessary. 

But Ferdinand moves on without hesitation as if this conversation was as inconsequential as the new Aoibheann painting on the wall, and Hubert is forced to follow, lest he upset him again. “Anyway, now let us practice table manners. Why not go over the Leicester ones first, for a change? Where would you put your fork and knife if you wanted to signal to the waiter you were ready for a second course?”

* * *

After its rocky start, the lunch continues uneventfully. Ferdinand teaches him fundamental rules on how to “properly make small talk” as Hubert lets everything go in one ear and out the other. Ferdinand orders some grossly expensive sort of wine, Hubert refuses any wine he doesn’t see directly poured from the bottle, too often the chosen beverage for poison. The food is surprisingly good, and by the end of the lunch, Ferdinand’s smile has grown more honest again. His face has a ruddy shade as he parades them back to the castle—he drank not only his own glass of wine but Hubert’s as well, once it got through his thick skull that Hubert had no intention of drinking it, and he’s no doubt feeling their effect. 

The second item on Ferdinand’s agonizing agenda takes them to the little maid’s-room-turned-classroom. 

Ferdinand directs him to push the chalkboard to one side. When Hubert is finished with that, he starts towards Ferdinand to help him move the table, only for Ferdinand to effortlessly foist it up himself. Well, he supposes that even in the year after the war passed, one didn’t lose the strength gained from heavy armor so quickly. 

It might also be the fact that Ferdinand is almost definitely tipsy. 

“Alright, splendid!” Ferdinand exclaims, again, too loud as he assesses the clear center of the room, surely planning some macabre torture tango to teach. “Whoever said you needed music to dance? Come over here.” 

“You’re drunk,” Hubert says, knowing that the observation isn’t even near true. Ferdinand is tipsy, at the most, and probably acting it up because this etiquette nonsense—the lessons he was forcing on Hubert for hours each day—actually seem to make him happy for some unearthly reason. 

“I am not drunk!” Ferdinand sounds absolutely aghast in the most performative way. “Now, come, put your hand on my waist.” 

Hubert’s seen people dance before. It looks unnecessarily complicated and nowhere near worth all the effort for the outcome, but he at least knows what it looks like. He raises one hand and puts the other on Ferdinand’s scapula. 

“The other hand, Hubert.” 

Ah. He switches his hands, so his left is the one awkwardly hanging in the air and his right settles on Ferdinand’s upper back. 

“Oh, what are we going to do with you?” Ferdinand asks, his disappointment clearly exaggerated. “Keep your hand strong, like this.” Ferdinand flexes the hand that’s raised, repositions it a little lower. “You keep your hand here, yes? Sturdy. It does not move much when you dance.” Hubert nods. “Ah, you will not want to take our gloves off, will you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fine,” Ferdinand says, not putting up a fight this time. “I will keep mine on as well then. Now, straighten your back a little. You can look over my shoulder if you need to, but it really is most polite for the leader to look at the follower’s face. Now I, as the follower, can look wherever I please. Here in Adrestia, it is common for the followers to look away from their partners, like this—” Ferdinand turns his head to one side, stretching his neck out absurdly far. They are the proper distance away from each other, but Ferdinand feels oppressively close. Hubert, unused to being so near to someone else and distinctly uncomfortable with it, resists the urge to step back as their chests nearly press together. “—to the right, usually. The same goes for Faerghus, actually, that is how nearly all of their dancing is. I prefer how they do it in the Alliance, though, where you look directly at your partner. I think it is more intimate that way.” Ferdinand smiles up at him again. “Now, it is quite obvious that you have not been practicing posture with the book on your head.” 

At the reminder, Hubert finds himself straightening his back almost immediately. It cracks loudly with the movement. “It’s futile. I’m just going to slouch again anyway.” 

“Too bad. You look much better with your back straightened,” Ferdinand says, smiling again. “Now, you can move your hand a little further down.”

“Further down… like?” Hubert lets his right hand, the one touching Ferdinand’s back, slide down a bit. He feels incredibly awkward being this close to someone without actively murdering, torturing, mutilating, or otherwise causing them pain. He would much rather just draw his hand away altogether. 

“Further than that, Hubert. My waist. We are not at school anymore.” And then Ferdinand grabs his hand without warning, and it’s all Hubert can do to keep from snatching it away. He guides Hubert’s hand lower, until it rests in the dip of his lower back. “That is better. We are all adults here. It can get a little higher if need be, but I would not dare any lower than that.”

“And, if you are playing the woman, you would put your other hand on my shoulder?” Hubert asks.

“Yes, uh, if I was playing the woman, I would put my hand here,” he says, and puts his hand on Hubert’s upper arm, right by his shoulder. “Very good. Now, your feet should actually be together. You will want to have your feet together at nearly all times, unless you are currently moving—which you will be at all times, mind you.” Hubert is already confused. “Very good. Soften your knees a bit, now, this is a basic waltz position and—Hubert, you are not looking at me.”

Hubert draws his eyes back from where they had focused on the other side of the room. “It’s… well. It’s awkward.”

Ferdinand pauses a moment. “Why is it awkward?”

“I’m just…” How should Hubert say it? Being this close to another person? Being expected to move in a way anyone would classify as elegant? Having to practice at something he’s only ever seen as a frivolous waste of time? Everything about it was awkward. “I’m just not the type of person to be a good dancer. It’s absurd.” 

This close, Ferdinand has to look up at him to meet his eyes, and as he leans up and in towards him, Hubert reluctantly makes eye contact. “It is not absurd.” His voice comes out small, and he rubs the hand on Hubert’s shoulder with his gloved hand in an attempt at comfort Hubert isn’t sure if he’s touched or insulted by. “You are going to be a great dancer, someday, Hubert.” Ferdinand’s eyebrows pinch up when he talks, the beginnings of a pout on his face. “I can see it.”

“All of this.” It’s hard to keep eye contact with Ferdinand like this but he forces himself to keep his gaze steady. Ferdinand’s faltering smile, the look of expectation on his face, is altogether too much. “It’s just. I’m not made for any of this. Manners, politeness, it’s not in my nature.” 

“Hubert,” Ferdinand says his name in that same voice, too quiet. Hubert doesn’t deserve this gentleness—even that isn’t in his nature. His name, the name his father gave him, isn’t meant to be murmured softly when dancing with a friend. It’s meant to be the last wretched curse choked out with his victims’ dying breaths. “You are very capable of this. Think of it, like…” Ferdinand’s hand, the one resting on Hubert’s arm, goes to his chest, smoothing out a wrinkle in his uniform that Hubert hadn’t noticed. “It is tactical, really, dancing.” Ferdinand bites at his lip, his smile starting to strengthen again, and looks down. “Perhaps I came on too strong. I should teach this in the way you would like to be taught, not the way I would like to teach.”

And then, Ferdinand steps away from him and walks over to the chalkboard, leaving Hubert with enough room to breathe comfortably again. 

“If you think of dancing from a bird’s eye view, that might help. Learning to read dance step diagrams is not so different from analyzing troop movements with the right mindset. I do not want you to be miserable learning this, Hubert, really. You deserve much better as my student than that. Now. Think of dancing as a series of steps, rather than something you feel in your body. That can come second, once you feel more confident in the basics. I can draw out the, um, pattern of movement for you.” Ferdinand starts scrawling something—arrows, Hubert thinks—on the board. “Think of it like studying the hand motions of a spell.” When he turns back to face Hubert again, his smile is different. No less authentic, but somehow gentler. Understanding? “Do you think learning like this will be better for you?”

Hubert looks at the arrows Ferdinand’s drawn on the board. It… doesn’t look like much of anything to Hubert. But still, sitting down, learning from someone lecturing with diagrams, mastering the theoretical before the physical, that certainly seemed better. Anything beat having to stand so close to someone, stumbling through something he had no idea how to do. He nods, slowly, and walks closer to the chalkboard to see if he can make sense of Ferdinand’s drawings. “I think it’ll work.”

* * *

After a brief reprieve to actually do their jobs—Hubert arriving late to quite an important meeting with Edelgard, and Ferdinand sobering up, no doubt—they meet up in Ferdinand’s room in the castle for the final lesson of the day. 

Hubert hasn’t been to Ferdinand’s quarters in a few months and isn’t surprised to see that he’s collected more objects in that time. At the start of the war, Ferdinand’s room was bare. It was Hubert himself who had made it so if he thinks about it. He directly oversaw the stripping away of his families’ wealth, redistributing nearly every item in their possession. When Ferdinand had arrived at Garreg Mach to help with the war all those years ago, with naught more than a few changes of clothes and a few pieces of poor quality weaponry in his name—no antique armor strewn about in Ferdinand’s room to signal the past greed of his ancestors—it had stuck Hubert as a cause for celebration. The nobility had fallen. Now when his eye catches on a vintage set of armor glinting in the sunlight from Ferdinand’s window, the same feeling of victory hits him again. His friend (his _best_ friend, as Ferdinand had called him) was making a life of his own, using his own hard-earned resources instead of his family’s hoarded wealth. 

The room itself is big, about the size of Edelgard’s. Hubert tries to recall the blueprints he’d sketched of the castle all those years ago, and vaguely remembers the room once belonging to one of Edelgard’s now long-dead siblings. Hubert stays in the room his father used when he slept at the castle, and the emperor’s room remains empty, as it would forevermore.

“I do not know why I had not done this earlier,” Ferdinand says as he sorts through the mess of various odds and ends precariously balanced on top of his dresser. “Hubert, how often do you shave?” 

The question surprises him, but he answers swiftly. “Once every three days. Maybe four?”

Ferdinand looks at him over his shoulder, incredulous. “Dastard. And you look that clean-shaven?”

“I’m not a particularly hairy person,” Hubert says simply. Because it’s true. He remembers his surprise, the time he accidentally burnt off some of his arm hair when misfiring a spell, at how slowly the hair in the offending area grew back. 

Ferdinand regards him for a few moments, lost in thought, and then shakes his head, returns his attention back to the mess on top of his dresser. “Well. Still, it is important to know how to take care of your skin when you shave. And even when you do not shave. You should be washing your face twice a day.” 

“Twice? That’s absurd.”

“It is not absurd, Hubert, it is basic hygiene.” 

“I never get pimples.”

“I _know_ and I cannot emphasize how much it infuriated me as a youth. Yes, now, you will get to see how the rest of us all liv—aha!” he exclaims, pulling a medium-sized package wrapped in red paper from somewhere in the depths of the pile. “Here we are. I bought these for you the last time I was in town.”

Ferdinand hands him the package and watches eagerly while Hubert unwraps it. Inside, there are three small bottles, three larger jars, and a straight razor. Hubert takes them each out from the bundle, and having nowhere else, puts them down on Ferdinand’s hazardous dresser. The straight razor he takes out last and flips it open with unsurprising skill. “I like my knife more.” 

“You shave with a knife?” 

“I sharpen it first.” 

Ferdinand coughs into his fist, shaking his head again. What exactly was he disagreeing with? He can’t argue it’s not effective if he never noticed.“Well, as much as the image of that is… something, you should really consider trying with an actual razor. It will do you a world of good.” Hubert looks down at the blade. Well, it looks sharp enough to do the job. He could definitely kill someone with it. “Now, what do you think about the rest of it?”

Hubert squints down at the bottles and jars, trying to read the lettering on the paper wrapped around them and finding them frustratingly minimalistic. “I have no idea what they are.” 

“You do not…” Ferdinand picks up a bottle, seemingly at random. “You do not know what shaving cream is?”

Hubert rolls his eyes, not allowing himself to be shamed by this dandy. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Goddess, Hubert, please do not tell me you shave with just soap.”

“I…” Hubert looks down at his hands, still clutching the razor. If he slit Ferdinand’s throat now, he could save himself the embarrassment. “Water, only, unfortunately.” 

“Hubert!” Ferdinand exclaims, disappointment lacing his voice. Then, he brings a hand to his temple and drags his fingers down his face. “That is horrible. Hubert, that is just. Horrible. Goddess.” There’s a moment of blessed silence as Ferdinand comes to terms with his horror before he launches back into his spiel. “Well!” he says with newfound energy. “This will just be another part of your lessons. Come with me, back to the classroom.”

* * *

Ferdinand deposits the jars and bottles on the table—still pushed to the corner for their dancing lessons—in the little makeshift “classroom,” then totes Hubert along to help him get various items—bowls of water, empty bowls, towels.

Once they get back in the room, Ferdinand arranges all of the items on the table in delicate rows while he talks. Something about all of this, the opportunity to teach maybe, has got him excited all over again. Hubert can hear it in his voice, see it in the way he moves his hands. 

“Now, the best way to teach you will be to show you. It may be better to do this tomorrow, but you said you do not grow hair very fast, anyway. Who knows, maybe you can implement your new knowledge tomorrow morning before your tea with Bernadetta.” 

“It’s not tea. It’s coffee.”

“Sure, sure—excuse me, I must take my gloves off. Now, sit down, take your jacket off, and unbutton your collar.”

Hubert takes off his jacket and resignedly sits down in the chair, slumping over. He realizes his faux pas nearly immediately. “You’re not going to make me sit down properly again, are you?”

“Pardon?” Ferdinand says as he fiddles around with something behind Hubert. “Oh, no, don’t be silly.” Dastard. “Lay back. I wish we had a proper chair for this, I am sure there is one in the castle, but we can look for that on another date.”

Hubert thinks of telling him that after using a knife to shave, he’s not bothered by the lack of a proper chair. Nonetheless, he tips his head back. 

“You never unbuttoned your collar. Here, allow me,” Ferdinand says behind him, and then bare hands reach down in front of Hubert’s face, unfastening the collar of his white shirt to expose Hubert's neck. “First—look here—this pre-shave oil,” Ferdinand says, and Hubert cranes his neck to look at the bottle Ferdinand holds up. Well, it did say _pre-shave oil_ on it.

Hubert hears the sound of skin against skin as Ferdinand’s hands rubbing together beside his ear. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when Ferdinand’s hands come to Hubert’s face but he still startles. 

“You cannot be that ticklish.” 

“I’m not. I just wasn’t expecting that, that’s all,” Hubert says, lying. He definitely is that ticklish. 

And then, Ferdinand's hands settle on Hubert’s chin and he begins to massage the oil into his skin. His touch is delicate and light, fleeting, absent again after only a few short seconds of presence. It doesn’t feel like a proper massage, not like the ones Hubert used to give Edelgard when her armor weighed down on her shoulders. Instead, Ferdinand’s touch is faint, as if he’s afraid he’ll somehow hurt Hubert. Fool. Nonetheless, even as Ferdinand settles a warm wet towel across Hubert’s face, he still feels the ghost of Ferdinand’s touch on his skin. 

“Usually, of course, you would not need a hot towel if you had just bathed or gone to the sauna, but I imagine you probably do not keep a schedule that allows you to shave at regular times,” Ferdinand says above him.

Hubert half-listens stuck on a certain thought. It had occurred to Hubert that this is the first time Ferdinand has touched him without his gloves on. Before these lessons started, he had never seen Ferdinand’s hands without gloves on. Now, within the span of a few days, he has seen them twice—once, out of the corner of his eye, at that first tea lesson and now, so close to his face he can see the freckle on Ferdinand’s left thumb. At the time of the first tea lesson, he was too focused on the dismal state of his own hands to fully process the enormity of the moment. But now, with their phantom touch felt as surely as the hot towel, he finds himself finally appreciating the weight of this deviation from the norm. It shouldn’t be surprising it’s never happened before. Both of them never took their gloves off, even with Ferdinand’s claim that it was more polite to remove them for some occasions. It’s been nearly eight—or was it nine?—years since enrolling at the Officer’s Academy. And he knew Ferdinand ever since he was a snotty-nosed brat, and this week has been the first time he can remember where Ferdinand took his gloves off. 

If he remembers correctly from that feather-light touch, Ferdinand’s hands were… soft. He supposes it makes sense. Keeping one’s gloves on all day, every day would have that sort of effect on the skin, especially if Ferdinand was using these sorts of salves and lotions underneath. Hubert’s hands, of course, are rough nonetheless, magical scar tissue having built up over the years. Years of war, of casting spells, of winning. His own hands are entirely different from Ferdinand’s, and it is only now that they have been unveiled to him that he is fully appreciating that.

Ferdinand removes the hot towel from his face, and Hubert blinks his eyes open. 

“Now, when I shave someone, I usually mix the shaving cream while the hot towel is on their face. But I want to show you how I do it. Sit up a bit.”

Hubert sits up so he can watch Ferdinand give detailed instructions on how to use the animal-hair brush to work up the cream to a lather in a small porcelain bowl. He doesn’t say anything, just watching. Ferdinand’s hands are big, with a light dusting of red hair. They dwarf the small bowl, making it look like a model toy for a child, or even a doll’s prop. Years of handling lances and horses have made his grip strong, and the brush in his hand looks almost absurd in comparison. If Hubert hadn’t just now felt how gentle those hands could be, he’d worry that Ferdinand would unwittingly break something so delicate. It’s strange how much bigger his hands look ungloved, and Hubert almost feels embarrassed at his own slender but long fingers. 

“Now, lay back again.” Hubert does so silently, and when Ferdinand comes around his front, there’s an odd expression on his face. Their friendship was typically built around amicable squabbling, not this sort of obedience, and Hubert wonders why he submits so willingly. It was only shaving. For star’s sake, it actually felt pleasant. When Ferdinand begins dabbing the foam onto Hubert’s face, at the bit of what can barely be called stubble, it feels good. Hubert doesn’t find himself flinching away, when, for all intents and purposes, he should be frustrated about this. Should feel uncomfortable with getting pampered like this, without being able to do anything in return. Instead, his eyes fall shut and he lets the ministrations of Ferdinand’s large hands lull him. 

Then there is a knife at his throat. Ah, yes. That was sort of the point of shaving. 

“So,” Ferdinand begins, with a beat after. Does his voice somehow sound more excited? Or perhaps he was just closer. “You are to start with downwards strokes—with the grain—up here. I will leave where you go against the grain for last, so you can feel it.”

Hubert almost nods before remembering the knife at his face and thinks better of it. Ferdinand splays the fingers of one hand against his forehead, steadying him, and pulls at his skin before starting gentle downward strokes of the razor against his skin. 

Hubert keeps his eyes closed, despite knowing he could open them. Perhaps should, for the sake of the lesson.

If you had asked Hubert only an hour before if there was anyone in the world he trusted with a knife at his neck, he wouldn’t hesitate to say no. He, as a von Vestra, could never truly trust another person with his whole heart, not even Edelgard. Not in the life that he lived, not in the war he was fighting. In Hubert’s line of work, if you could call it that, faith in another was a luxury he couldn’t afford. And yet, there he was, tilting his head back so Ferdinand could press the razor closer against his jugular.

After a minute or so, Ferdinand works his way over to the hair above Hubert’s lip and presses a finger against his nose to adjust it for more space.

“You’ve done this before,” Hubert realizes.

Ferdinand doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Hubert opens his eyes, wondering if he said the wrong thing. Ferdinand is above him, his hair tied back, and at least by the time that Hubert opens his eyes, a look of concentration back on his face. “Yes, actually.”

He begins on the other side of Hubert’s face, downward strokes against his cheek, under his chin. Hubert closes his eyes again, not sure what to make of seeing Ferdinand’s face this close to him, even if it appears upside down from the positions they are in.

Ferdinand speaks again after a few moments, though Hubert doesn’t know if he was expecting it or not. “My father used to have me shave him every morning.” His voice comes out quiet like he finally realizes how close he is to the person he’s talking to. “He used to tell me that it was practice. It was not for many years later that I realized there was nothing I was practicing for. I doubt the future wife he envisioned me having would need it.” 

Hubert is silent at the admission, not because he doesn’t want to speak, but because he knows not what to say.

“Perchance all the practice was for this very moment, no?” Ferdinand asks, a laughing lilt to his voice, but even Hubert can tell he’s not supposed to answer. “I always thought it was a chore, but with you, not so much.” 

Hubert can hear the razor scrape against the dry towel Ferdinand has over Hubert’s shoulder. 

“It has been years since then, though,” Ferdinand says, dismissively. “I have not shaved another person since first enrolling in the Officer’s Academy, I think. Tilt your head up.”

Hubert is almost jarred with how quickly Ferdinand goes from one thought to another but tilts his head further back after a beat. Then he can feel Ferdinand shaving “against the grain” as he had called it, against the sensitive skin of his neck. He has to focus on not shuddering at the pressure on a spot even he so rarely touches. 

Ferdinand finishes shaving his neck in silence, until, just when he finishes and pulls away, he says, still unusually quiet, “you know, you have quite a nice Indech’s Apple. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Hubert knows the answer to that but hesitates all the same. “Um, no.” What a bizarre compliment, assuming it was a compliment in the first place.

“Now comes the aftershave. If you were doing this yourself you would wash the rest of your face at this point, with this face wash here, but I trust you know how to do that yourself.” 

“I’ve washed my face before, Ferdinand.” Hubert knew at least that much.

“A surprising but encouraging fact,” Ferdinand says, and then his hands come down to Hubert’s chin again, massaging in the—aftershave, Ferdinand had called it. Now, without the layer of hair Hubert had barely noticed, Ferdinand’s hands feel even softer against the new smoothness of Hubert’s skin. 

Hubert does shudder at the next towel, entirely cold, pressing down on his skin.

“Shh,” Ferdinand tsks at him softly. “Not everyone does this, but it’s good for closing the pores again. If you put the lotion on too soon after shaving, it can be dangerous. The purpose of aftershave is to disinfect the skin, so that’s good for immediately after, but you need to let the pores close before putting lotion on.” As he talks, Ferdinand massages Hubert’s face through the towel, the spot on his jaw he didn’t even know ached until Ferdinand’s finger presses against it. “There we go.” Then, the towel is removed. Hubert opens his eyes again, to see Ferdinand rubbing something else in his hands. “Lotion is all there is left.”

Hubert feels Ferdinand’s stomach press against the crown of his head as he leans over, and then his large hands press against Hubert’s face. This time, Hubert genuinely tries to keep his eyes open, but something about the way that Ferdinand looks down at him makes him close them again. 

Ferdinand’s hands seem to stay on his face for a full minute, slowly massaging the lotion in. Then, he rises above the shaven area, applying it to Hubert’s nose, his temple, his forehead. When the pads of Ferdinand’s fingers touch against his eyelids, Hubert tries to remember the last time someone had touched him like this. Edelgard might put a hand on his arm sometimes, or Caspar might hit him on the chest or tug Hubert down to put a hand on his shoulder. Sometimes, Bernadetta would bump into him when attempting to hide from something or other. But apart from the injuries he sustained in battle, and the injuries he doles out in the dungeons, those moments were the closest contact he ever had with other people since his mother’s passing. And yet, here he was, Ferdinand von Aegir’s fingers against his eyelids.

After an amount of time Hubert doesn’t have a gauge of, Ferdinand removes his hands. 

When Hubert opens his eyes, still tacky from the lotion drying on his lids, Ferdinand is out of his line of sight. He sits up in the chair, and his spine cracks from the movement. Maybe he really should walk around with the book on his head. Still, the extended stretch felt good. He stands up, removing and folding the towel Ferdinand had been cleaning the razor with and turns to face him. 

Ferdinand’s back is to him, his body language closed off. Hubert can see from this angle that he holds one arm close across his body, the other resting against his face, perhaps covering his mouth.

When he turns around, his smile is bright but forced. “Well! That is enough for today, I think! Let us be off to dinner, I, uh, will uh, save you from the need to practice the proper cutlery positions for the second time today.”

Hubert has learned his lesson about pushing too far today. “Very well,” he acquiesces. “You won’t hear me complain about ending early.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Bernie, a lesson in love, and a special guest appearance.


	4. Great Tree Moon, Week 2, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation with Bernadetta, a lesson in love, and a special surprise guest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you are all too kind!!! as always, an immense amount of thanks and love to my beta, [GuiltyBystanders.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyBystanders/pseuds/GuiltyBystanders) she does so much fantastic work. and provides me with em-dashes, instead of pretending that that " -- " can pass as an em-dash.

Bernadetta spends roughly twenty percent of her time at the Varley estate, she told Hubert a few months after the war’s conclusion. Each week, she tries to spend less time in the emptied house.

Hubert’s learned that this doesn’t mean she’s become any less of a homebody. No, instead, she spends her time in a quaint brownstone in the uptown district of Enbarr. The brick facade of the townhouse has ivy crawling up the side and each of the windows has a box of flowers teetering out of it. For a house that Bernadetta has only owned for a year, it represents her disposition perfectly. 

When he rings the bell, he isn’t surprised when she doesn’t open the door immediately. After a few minutes, he tries the doorknob. Aha. Another of Bernadetta’s tricks, that. Unlock the door when expecting someone, instead of answering it yourself. “Miss Varley?” he calls out as he enters the landing space, much too quiet for her to hear.

Inside, the walls are plastered with art. 

Hubert knows that nobles like art. He remembers selling nearly every piece in the castle once Edelgard rose to power. Big, hulking frames with glass insets, miserable portraits of old tyrants inside. Even the more creative pieces were still hyper-detailed and pristine on the walls. 

There’s nary a frame to be seen in Bernadetta’s house. Instead, small scraps of paper with portraits of familiar faces dot the walls. Larger pictures depict scenery green with speckles of blue and purple. Squares and circles of embroidered plants and animals. Small bits of weaving, the beginnings of a tapestry forgotten or deserted. Whenever he visits Bernadetta, it’s a pleasure to see what new pieces of art she’s strung up. 

“Miss Varley?” He keeps quietly calling out to her, just so she can’t accuse him of sneaking up on her, though that’s quite obviously his intention. It’s just much too rewarding to surprise Bernadetta. 

He slips through her living room and does his best to not silence the creaking of the stairs at his footsteps, as he usually is like to do. He checks first her studio, but she’s not at her desk like usual. There’s only a flurry of papers, messier than Hubert’s own. He’s about to move on to her bedroom when the strings on her loom catch his eye.

The yarn isn’t in the usual greens, pinks, and lavenders like her half-finished projects on her walls. It’s not the blues or greens of various things that she’s often commissioned; sea scenes, mythological interpretations, great white horses. 

Instead, the yarn in her loom is shades of black and purple. The tapestry is barely half-finished, but in the upper left corner, yellows and oranges are woven in. The bottom half is a night-scene in the colors of Miasma. In the middle stands a lone barren tree, branches stretching out the width of the loom, cutting through not a moon, but a sun. He leans in closer to inspect the way that the sun’s wriggling rays bleed into the purples, admiring the blending of yarn. The detail that went into crafts like this always amazed him. If Bernadetta ever felt inclined to put such dedication into another line of work, she would be a fantastic spy.

“Do you like it?” 

Hubert would like to pretend that he doesn’t jump out of his skin, but the crashing of a basket he knocks over makes that difficult. It’s a miracle he doesn’t slit Bernadetta’s throat right there, at the surprise of being snuck upon. 

“Bernadetta,” he hisses, turning around to face her. He finally finds a use for one of Ferdinand’s lessons and straightens his back to rise to his full height, towering over her. She stands less than a meter away from him. How had he not noticed her walking so close?

Bernadetta lets out a noise that Hubert can only describe as “eek.” Her hands fly to cover her eyes. “I’m sorry!” she squeaks, and then immediately starts mumbling under her breath, something about how she’s too young to die. 

“I’m not going to kill you, Bernadetta,” he tells her. 

She peeks at him behind her fingers, a flash of grey eyes. 

“Today,” he clarifies, “I’m not going to kill you today.” He watches her cower all over again. My, my, it was too easy.

After he calms her down again, they go to the kitchen to prepare the coffee. Hubert doesn’t hold the door for her, and she uses the coffee press herself instead of expecting him to. She holds the door open for him, instead of the other way around. They never touch, don’t shake hands, she doesn’t curtsy, he doesn’t bow. 

Instead of using the parlor or the small sitting room with a terrace upstairs, they sit in her studio, Bernadetta on a rickety chair, Hubert on a stepping stool she no doubt uses to reach things on the top of her bookcases. Hubert’s coffee cup, which he notices affectionately is chipped, sits on the desk her easel is next to, and he has to constantly check that he’s grabbed the right cup and not one of the various teacups filled with questionably colored paint water.

Bernadetta has never been one to get to the point quickly. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, she still has neglected to mention why she invited him over. This isn’t unusual in conversations with her, but it’s rarer still that she sends for someone without a particular reason. He’s a patient man, though—you have to be in his line of work. He’ll allow her more time to work up the bravery needed to say whatever she couldn’t through her letters.

“That tapestry. It’s not like your other work, is it?”

“Um, no, well! It’s a commission, actually. Everyone’s been so nice, commissioning me,” she says. Her smile is always nervous, even if her joy is obviously genuine. “I thought that you’d like that one, actually!” 

“Because of my demeanor?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” she mutters and then looks up at him. “Ah! I didn’t mean it like, that, I just… Uh.”

“I think that’s exactly how you meant it, Bernadetta.” He has half a mind to tell her to stop apologizing, but he knows that won’t help. She’s probably even more anxious because of the coffee. “I don’t mind, there’s no need to kid ourselves.” He looks back at the tapestry, admiring the delicate work of the yarn spun. “I like it. The colors are nice.”

“Good!” she exclaims, a little too loud. “If you’d believe it, Igntaz commissioned me recently, also! Do You remember him? A commoner from school? I don’t know why you’d remember him, but. Well, he was really good at art, and he commissioned me recently.”

“I remember him.” He does, if only vaguely. He remembers the background check he ran on him and his family before arriving at Garreg Mach better than any interaction they might have had.  
“Well, he wrote me recently. An art exchange, but also a commission.” 

“The postal service is functioning again, even across large distances in the Alliance. It took damn long enough, but Minister Aegir pressed on.” Weeks of impossible meetings and ever-increasing funding from Edelgard. It wouldn’t have been Hubert’s top priority, other than for his own networks, but the people spoke, and what they decided was that a Fodlan without mail was not an exciting one to live in. Hubert would think that they’d care more about the famine and disease the war brought, but no. Mail.

“S-speaking of the Alliance! I had wanted to talk about…” begins Bernadetta, before trailing off. 

There it was. Perhaps they’d finally get to the root of why she called him here. He motions for her to continue.

“Um.” Bernadetta swallows a few times. “Uh.” A small cough. “I had wanted to talk about… this artist I found out about in the Alliance! That’s what I wanted to talk about. An artist.” 

She was so infuriatingly adorable, even as she obviously lied to him. “An artist, hm?”

“Yes, actually!” she says, and then, noticing the sharpness in her own voice, says again, quietly, “an artist. From the western Alliance. She does, uh. It’s sort of hard to describe, but. With ink, she puts art into your skin?”

“You’ll need to explain that a little more in-depth.”

“Ah! I’m sorry,” she says, cringing at herself. “She uses—it’s kind of scary, but she uses a needle to prick ink into the skin.” She waves her hands about as if clarifying something, but Hubert isn’t sure what. “I thought it sounded bad at first, trust me! But, the end product is beautiful. It’s sort of like—a pen drawing, on the skin, but permanent. Doesn’t wash off. Have you heard about it?”

“If I recall correctly, tattoos are part of Brigid custom.”

“Oh _no_!” Bernadetta’s leg taps against her chair. “I—don’t tell Petra I forgot!” 

Petra was far too busy these days for Hubert to include something so trivial in his occasional letters. He had enough practicing small talk with Ferdinand yesterday that this conversation topic makes his head hurt. “Why do you think this would interest me?”

“Well. It’s new, and it’s very pretty, and I thought that it might…” She takes a breath, “it might help with the state of your hands! That’s what I thought. Now that there’s an artist here in Fodlan.”

Hubert looks down at his gloved fingers, and then awkwardly reaches for his coffee cup. He normally doesn’t think much about his hands, other than making sure they’re covered everywhere other than the dungeons, where he can use them to revolt and intimidate prisoners, but recently they have come up again and again. 

Bernadetta is one of the few that he’s confided in about them. At first, she was afraid of the discoloration, but only in the way Bernadetta was afraid of most things. After only a short time, she’d grown a strange obsession with Hubert’s affliction. She’d always had an affection for the macabre and has asked Hubert more than a few times to remove his gloves so she might draw them. Of course, he’s turned her down every time, but she has persisted in her mission. This tattooing idea, though, that was new.

“I fail to see how tattoos could help with magic aftermarks.” They weren’t too much of a rarity. Use too much dark magic without a crest, and the spells would start to color the place you cast them from. It had to do with how magical energy was stored in the bloodstream. Fascinating stuff, really. The books on the biology of magic in his quarters were well-read.

“They could help in—basically every way! It would be nice, I thought, to replace the marks with something more positive. Art, you know?” Bernadetta has put her cup down, playing with her hands as she speaks.

“Art,” he repeats. “Whatever happens, the color isn’t going to go away. I don’t see how drawing over it will help.”

“I just think that it could be… pretty. Beautiful, even.” Bernadetta shrinks as something occurs to her. “N-not that I think the marks you have now aren’t beautiful! They really, really are. Agh, I want to paint them so bad! But I know you don’t like them like I do, so. Tattoos could be fun. It could be like. Your thing!”

“I have a thing, Bernadetta. I have a lot of things, actually. I don’t need another. And anyways, I doubt ink will even show up against the skin there,” Hubert says, thinking of the marks. They barely went past his wrists, except for one streak on his left arm that traveled up his veins, but they covered almost the entirety of his hands, only a few small patches of skin unmarked as if to provide contrast to the rest of the corruption.

“I could design it for you, though. It could be really pretty! Think about it, at least. Ignatz was telling me that the woman is very good, one of the most reliable artists he knows, actually. And I thought you’d like the needles…”

Hubert sighs as she talks, and stirs the spoon in his coffee at an improper angle in both the Empire and Alliance. It makes a clinking noise against the side of the cup. “Bernadetta. What exactly is it that you want to talk about?”

Another “eek,” and Bernadetta bends her head down towards her chest, hiding her face. She takes a few breaths, mutters something to herself under her breath, then says something so quietly Hubert can’t hear.

“What?” he asks, and can hear Ferdinand’s voice in his mind, chiding him that a noble never says _what?_ or _huh?_ but instead _excuse me?_ or _I beg your pardon?_

Bernadetta repeats herself, still entirely too quiet.

“I can’t hear you, Bernadett—”

“Don’t get married!” she says, nearly shouting. Her hands have come to clutch her skirt in her lap, and with her head dipped Hubert can just see that her eyes are squeezed shut. Then, she lifts her head to look directly at him. “I heard about the marriage arrangement, and—”

“How does everyone know about this already?” he asks.

“Hubert, an arranged marriage is—it’s everything we fought against. It’s the embodiment of everything we fought against. Why are you doing it?” Direct eye-contact with Bernadetta is surprisingly jarring, and Hubert finds himself looking away. Suddenly, the stool feels uncomfortable underneath him, so as he puts his cup back on the easel, he stands, walking over to her window to feign looking out.

“It simply needs to be done.” 

“No! No it—it doesn’t!” She almost sounds like she’s convincing herself. More likely she’s convincing herself to not sway on her opinion. Just hearing the tone strikes Hubert’s heart with a sense of pride. “It doesn’t need to be done. There are hundreds of other ways we could reach peace with the Roundtable,” she says. “This doesn’t need to be done, and you don’t need to be the one to do it.”

“I am not letting one of my...” Hubert attempts to take a brave page from Bernadetta’s book, “...friends get married off to someone.” He turns to face her.

“But you don’t need to either! What makes you think I want to let you get yourself married off to someone!” she argues. She actually argues. She’s a warrior, capable of many things, but Hubert can count on one hand the number of times she’s put her foot down this strongly around him. “I don’t care what you think! I don’t! This is bad, Hubert, this is really bad. And I think you should—just. You shouldn’t do it!”

“Bernadetta,” he says, putting his hands behind his back, attempting to be calming. Calming is not a trait many would use to describe his voice, even at his natural cadence dropping the menacing persona he uses when talking to most other people. “It’s not just me alone in this. Edelgard and I have discussed it, and Ferdinand is giving me the necessary educat—”

“Bullshit!” Bernadetta shouts. She stands up, out of her chair, her hands clenched into fists. And then, her face darkens to a deep red, embarrassed. “I mean—I just. Finishing school isn’t education. That’s not what education is and there’s—there’s nothing necessary about it! It’s horrible!”

Hubert observes Bernadetta’s outburst, unsure what to say. “It’s not finishing school, Bernadetta.”

“Don’t tell me what it is or it isn’t! He’s keeping you in a room all day and teaching you unnecessary stuff about etiquette and courting and goddess knows what, and. It’s bullshit, Hubert! That’s what it is!” Her hands unclench only to grasp at her skirts again, but the gaze in her eyes is driven, passionate. “I know you’re gonna kill me, or—I don’t know, I’m sorry for yelling. But you have to know, though! It’s not right!” 

Hubert takes a few breaths, trying to let the tension in the room settle. He takes a step back, away from her, putting more space between them. “It’s important,” he says, but the words ring hollow with how much he’s spent the last few days arguing the opposite. 

“That’s a lie, and I know it! I can tell it. You don’t believe it.” She steps towards him, closing the newly created distance. He looks down on her and, for once, it feels strange. “We just fought a war so no one would have to go through something like this. It’s important that you _don’t_ do it. What’s the point of ending nobility if people still get married over politics anyway?” 

Hubert takes another purposeful pause before answering, giving them both a chance to breathe. “It’s alright, Bernadetta.”

“Don’t tell me it’s alright when it’s not alright!” She collapses down onto her chair again, letting out another noise Hubert doesn’t know how to describe. “None of it’s alright, being marriageable, being unmarriageable. Etiquette, courting. It’s not alright at all. And I can’t—I absolutely _cannot stand_ the idea of you putting yourself through that! It’s miserable!” 

Hubert looks around the room awkwardly. The eyes in her half-finished artwork look back at him. This was going to be an emotional conversation, wasn’t it? He fiddles with his hands behind his back, gulps. Then he takes his stool and pulls it beside Bernadetta’s chair. Sits beside her. 

She sits with her head tilted back in anguish, and Hubert realizes that it looks as if she’s laid back for a shave. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice deceptively calm.

“It’s alright,” he says again, not missing the irony of the repetition. 

She touches her hand to her temple. “It’s just, um. My father…” she says, and then trails off, her voice shaking. 

Hubert looks down at his hands again, unsure what he’s supposed to do. Is she expecting him to comfort her? How is he supposed to do that? Edelgard never wanted his comfort, hadn’t for so long that he doesn’t know how to give it anymore.

“He tried to train me for marriage. To be the perfect wife. It was horrible,” she says, voice cracking. He removes a handkerchief from his pocket preemptively, making sure to not grab the poisoned one. “He would do all these things, like, like tying me to a chair all day, challenging me to stay quiet. And he would make me, make me—” He hands her the handkerchief, and she takes it obligingly, not to wipe at her leaking eyes, but to play with in her hands. “He’d make me stand in one spot with a book on my head for hours and hours and hours, almost a day, and then when my legs gave out he’d just laugh at me, and tell me how I was useless, and no one would ever marry me. It’s terrible, Hubert. People who think like that, think you have to go through that to be worth anything. That any of that is important.” 

Hubert still doesn’t know what to say, so just nods awkwardly.

“T-tell me it’s not like that. Whatever it is Ferdinand’s teaching you. If it is, I…” She closes her eyes tight, and more tears fall. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but,” she raises a passionate fist, “it’ll be bad—and you won’t like it! Nothing, no matter what you think of this arranged marriage, and why you’re doing it. It’s not worth the lessons if they are, um. Like that.” 

Hubert realizes that this is a question he cannot get out of answering. He bites at his lip where it’s chapped. 

Ferdinand’s lessons were miserable. Don’t get him wrong. They were silly, and nonsensical, and altogether stupid. But, they weren’t… “They’re not like—that,” he says finally.

Bernadetta lets out a breath of relief. “Good. He doesn’t treat you badly? Make you do things you don’t want to?”

Well, he did have to do a lot of things he didn’t want to. That was true. But, well. It wasn’t like Ferdinand couldn’t recognize his boundaries, and clearly made decisions that tried to respect them. If anything... Had he done anything he truly didn’t want to do?

“No,” he says, finally. “He doesn’t make me do anything I want to do.” He takes a breath. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say next, but Bernadetta hears it and waits for him to talk. So he keeps talking. “It’s actually…” He takes another breath. “It’s fun,” he admits, and the words, though honest, feel strange coming from his mouth.

Is it fun? Has he been having… fun? The lessons themselves aren’t fun, not in the least. But poking fun at Ferdinand, having meaningless arguments with him, watching him get frustrated, those all had their pleasures. And, at the end of the day, Ferdinand was his _best friend_. Spending all day with him was enjoyable. And the very nature of education, learning something new, was fun no matter the subject. 

“Good,” she says again, breaking him from his thoughts. “And Ferdinand? Is he alright with teaching?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just know that he, uh, has some history with finishing school as well. Etiquette lessons, all that,” she says. She props herself up on her chair more, and finally dries her tears with his handkerchief. 

“Ah.” Hubert has guessed as much, from a few comments Ferdinand had made. “Yes, he’s quite alright, I think. He’s enjoying watching me struggle.”

Bernadetta smiles, finally, and it feels well-earned. “That’s good to hear. Not the, um, struggling bit, that’s. Really bad! But, I think it’s better that you’re having fun.”

Hubert considers reminding her that he’s still getting married, but thinks better of it. She’s only just stopped crying, and he doesn’t know if he could handle another emotional outbreak. One was already much too many for him. He gives her a laugh, admittedly a little forced, but at the sound, she laughs back. 

“Do you remember when you used to be afraid of my laugh?”

“I still am!” she says, giggling right back. 

“Would you like to tell me more about the Alliance tattoo artist?” he asks.

“More than anything.” 

They spend the next hour talking about tattoos, and Bernadetta takes out a booklet where she’s apparently already been sketching designs. The idea seems pointless with the state of Hubert’s hands, but it calms her down to discuss the possibility.

He doesn’t leave for hours, until late afternoon. They have another cup of coffee, for the road, and Hubert can already predict Bernadetta will be staying up all night. Drawing new tattoo designs, probably. When he leaves, he tells her she can keep the handkerchief for now, and she promises that when she returns it, it’ll be adorned with new threads.

* * *

“Today’s lesson is more philosophical, therefore, I have planned a secondary practical lesson to follow it,” Ferdinand lectures from beside the chalkboard. There are bits of dirt on his riding boots from that morning’s lesson, where Hubert still refused to open his eyes. Hubert’s own riding boots are loose and inflexible against his calves.

Altogether, the lecture-method Ferdinand had attempted adopting worked far better than his practical lessons. Hubert still needed to be taught particular actions, but hearing them broken down beforehand was certainly better than getting thrown in the deep end and expected to know them already. 

“There are five main languages of love. For romantic love, between two lovers, that is. Every person has a different way that they express love towards another, and the love languages provide general categories for those ways to fall under. Generally, the way that you express love is also the way you would most like to receive it. A common problem between romantic couples can be a discrepancy between love languages—one might expect their partner to express their love in one way, and miss how they are expressing it strongly and clearly in another.” Ferdinand leans his weight on one hip while he talks, then switches. “I thought it would be a fun exercise to figure out what your love language is, just so you can be aware of it. Then, when you are around your partner, you might be aware of how they express their love as well.”

Hubert looks at Ferdinand from where he sits at the table, fiddling with his pen. He has no paper. Taking notes on such subjects was pointless, but nonetheless, a pen to play with made a good toy. “You think I intend on falling in love with this person.”

“Well, I should hope,” Ferdinand fumbles. “I just thought this could be a bit of fun.”

“Fun, but perhaps unnecessary,” Hubert says, thinking about Bernadetta’s words. Which of these lessons was actually needed for a political marriage, and which were just—Ferdinand and him goofing off and taking time off their very important work?

“Perhaps,” Ferdinand says, looking down on the paper on which he'd written his notes. “But, I do not just want to make you into a passable husband, but a good one. I think learning such interpersonal relations will benefit you. It never hurts to learn more about yourself.” 

Hubert rolls his eyes. “Tell me about these languages of love.”

Ferdinand nods and writes them on the board while he talks.

“The first is physical touch, fairly obvious. Touching your partner, kissing them. I am sure you know what I am talking about, it seems somewhat straightforward.” Ferdinand glances down from the chalkboard to Hubert, who nods back at him. 

“Then would come quality time. Just the amount of time you spend with your partner. This could be reading a book beside them, or sitting beside them while they cook.” How did Ferdinand even come up with the cooking example? Hubert wonders the number of times that Ferdinand has held a spoon. He rests his elbow on the table, propping his chin up.

“Next is giving gifts.” Ferdinand writes this on the board below the other two. “Some people prefer material objects as expressions of their love. Receiving this form of love can be off-putting if you don’t understand it, I have heard. It can be unexpected to have a partner who showers you in gifts, when for instance, you are a person more likely to have another love language, like…” Ferdinand crescendos his voice dramatically, leading obviously into the next language he’s about to explain. Hubert yawns.

“Words of affirmation!” Ferdinand exclaims, writing the words on the board with fervor. “Sounds deceptively straightforward, no? Well, it is not. This could be simply telling a partner _I love you_ , but it’s not only that. Complimenting a partner, on their appearance, their skill sets, anything. Have you read the book I gave you yet?”

Was he supposed to have done that already? “No,” he says, awkwardly.

“Hubert!”

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.”

“It was homework!”

Hubert glares at his lap, but at least has the decency to feign guilt. 

“Fine,” Ferdinand says, sighing. “In that book, you will find countless other examples of words of affirmation,” Ferdinand underlines the phrase while he says it, “that you may find useful in the future.”

“Is that it?” Hubert wonders if he sounds as bored as he no doubt looks. He wasn’t planning on falling in love with his wife. What was the point of any of this? Theory about romance? Foolish.

“I said there were five.” Ferdinand faces the chalkboard when he writes. “The last would be acts of service. Now, this would be doing actions for your beloved, taking care of them, lessening their burden. Even making sure their burden is not too heavy in the first place.”

Hubert nods as if he’s really listening.

“Now, then! On this,” Ferdinand slides a blank sheet of paper across the desk, “paper I want you to think about your own languages of love. You can list out times that you have expressed love to someone close to you, and try to categorize them into these five languages.” 

Ugh. Homework. Hubert looks down at the sheet, and then back up at the chalkboard. He can barely read it. He looks back down at the sheet. 

Someone close to him? Who could that even be? His devotion to Edelgard is his most important relationship, but it’s not one that can be slotted in so easily to simplistic categories, nor is it one related to romance. He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt romantic love towards anyone. 

Words of affirmation was a no. He would only speak the truth to someone that he was in love with. So, yes, he might say he was in love with them, but he’d never lie to them, something most people’s ego finds necessary. He’d compliment them only when it was earned. False compliments rarely helped anyone. If he’s really thinking about it, he’d much prefer words of antagonization. Now, if he was to fall in love with someone, it would have to be someone he could argue with, someone who could battle him in wits. That sounds much more interesting than the typical honeyed banalities of lovesick fools.

Quality time was...well, if he was going to fall in love with someone, of course, he’d want to spend time with them. He’d be in love with them, wouldn’t he? What was the point of falling in love with someone he couldn’t stand being around? He thinks of the possibilities of his future wife for a moment, thinks of Hilda Goneril. A shiver goes down his spine. Yes, if he were ever to fall in love with anyone, he’d want it to be someone he could spend hours each day with, and never become bored. That being said, quality time could never be his primary way of showing his affection—his work will always come first, and his work is time consuming. He has enough trouble as it is scheduling time to meet with his friends. It would be impossible to while away the hours doing nothing with a lover, nor would he want someone so idle.

The last one Ferdinand mentioned, acts of service, seems the most obvious on the surface. After all, has he not spent his life serving Edelgard, trying to lessen her burden whenever he can? But that is precisely why it would not work in any other context. All his service, he gives to his Emperor, and any potential partner would have to understand that she would always come first.

He squints at the board, trying to remember the others. But his eyesight fails him. 

“What’s yours?” he asks Ferdinand, hoping he’ll mention what the rest of them are.

“Me? Oh,” Ferdinand says, and tucks a stray wave of hair behind his ear, “let me see. I have always been partial towards words of affirmation. I like telling people I like them. Physical touch is also important, and, oh, I think I would love to do acts of service with a romantic partner, and—”

“You can’t just list all of them,” Hubert objects. “That’s cheating!”

“Well, I just think they are all very important.” Ferdinand looks at the board, eyes trailing over the list.

“Of course they’re all important, they all make sense. I don’t know how I’m supposed to pick myself out on this list, shouldn’t they all be a part of loving someone?”

When the words leave Hubert’s mouth, he can barely hear himself saying them. But it’s true. If he were to love someone, he would have to be able to do all of these things. Physical touch, well, that would be something he’d have to get used to. But, with the right person, perhaps. 

But there wouldn’t be a right person. 

Ferdinand opens his mouth and closes it again. He looks down, flustered. “Well, I suppose that is true.” He seems to have spotted something very interesting on his shoe that Hubert cannot see. “Why, I was certain that you were going to choose giving gifts.”

Ah, that was one of them, wasn’t it? “Why would you think that?”

“You are always giving gifts for no reason, yes?” Ferdinand asks. “Even to your close friends. I was sure that in a romantic relationship, you would shower your lover in gifts.”

Did he give Ferdinand gifts that often? He supposes it was more than a few times, but. Given their conversation only nearly a week before, the forgotten tin of tea, he had thought Ferdinand hadn’t noticed. “I don’t give gifts all that frequently,” Hubert states. He neglects to mention that to people other than Ferdinand and Bernadetta, he gives gifts almost never.

“Oh.” Ferdinand looks back up at the board. “I suppose you are right.”

There’s silence in the room for a few moments. Hubert realizes he’s written nothing on his paper.

“I was planning a trip into town, to practice gift shopping,” Ferdinand sounds almost embarrassed. “I thought it may come in use.”

The way Ferdinand pouts holds no power over him.

“Of course, if gift-giving does not resonate with your own understanding of expressing affection, we absolutely do not need to. There are a few other—” 

Hubert chews at his lip, drags his hand across his face. “Ferdinand. Do you want to go on a shopping trip in the city?”

“Yes,” Ferdinand says, his voice deflating, sounding like he’d just been punched in the gut. 

“We can go on a shopping trip if you wa—”

“Not exactly a _shopping trip_ , but practice, I sai—” Ferdinand stops as he realizes that Hubert had agreed with him. “Oh. Do you actually want to?”

Fuck it. It beat whatever horrible alternate lesson Ferdinand was no doubt considering. “We might as well. I know absolutely nothing about jewelry or womenswear.”

“Well, that is splendid. We should go at once, then.”

They did not go at once, in fact. Before departing the castle, Ferdinand had asked him not to wear his uniform, saying he’d stick out in the downtown fashion district. This led to a small fiasco wherein Ferdinand didn’t believe Hubert when he said he barely owned anything else, but the stunned look on Ferdinand’s face when Hubert opened his monochrome closet was satisfactory enough. 

The streets of downtown Enbarr are blazingly hot, and even Hubert wishes he was wearing a lighter color or perhaps fewer layers. While bickering over a blouse cut in a seamstress shop, Hubert discovers Ferdinand knows absolutely nothing about womenswear at all, despite his facade of this being a lesson. When he actually points to a corset as a realistic article of clothing, Hubert calls him on it and he openly admits that nearly all of his women’s fashion knowledge is based on outdated opera costumes. He barely knows anything from this century, much less anything in style now. Hubert revels in the fact that this time he knows a good deal more, having familiarized himself with every object in Edelgard’s closet. For once, he is the one to tell Ferdinand about the new fashions, and he can’t help but gloat a little. 

Ferdinand has little tolerance for being told he’s wrong, though, and before Hubert knows it he’s being fitted for a new suit—something Hubert is sure he arranged just to display his knowledge of menswear. “For your birthday,” Ferdinand tells him, while a tailor jabs a pin into Hubert’s ankle. 

That night, while Hubert nods off over a cup of coffee and a pile of paperwork he’s not supposed to have, it occurs to him that he never asked if the suit was a gift, or merely something he was supposed to wear on his birthday. When he tries to recall all the birthday gifts he’s received in the last decade, all that comes to mind is Byleth’s flowers the previous year.

* * *

Stripped of all its former frivolities, the castle was nothing more than empty corridors, dusty rooms, and a roof to keep the rain away. Hubert had made sure that all that was left after Edelgard’s rise to power was an empty castle, with empty rooms, soon to be inhabited by no one. 

The dungeons were no exception. Or, they should have been no exception, if he were not skulking through them now.

While Hubert’s eyes adjust to the dark far quicker than those employed in more respectable professions, he still uses a torch when he suspects he is alone. 

The dungeons are just as awful as one would expect. Cold and always wet. No place for a child to spend valuable years of their life.

Today, the murkiness is increased by the rain outside, shallow streams of water trickling down the sides of the staircase. Hubert had always wished there was a railing, to help keep his footing on the mossy wetness of the stairs. But, with the narrowness of the stairway—built for another time, perhaps, when people were smaller—a handrail would be impractical.

Hubert has snuck into nearly every room down here. Years ago, the place was crawling with various sinister characters, Hubert included. Now, they’re starkly empty most of the time, the numbers of Those Who Slither in the Dark diminishing at the hands of Hubert’s and his network spread across Fodlan. 

Down here, in the deepest dungeons below the castle, he’s seen sights that most outside the von Vestra and imperial families never will. He’s seen the Hresvelg catacombs, great tombs of royalty and their closer relatives. Just skeletal bodies now, embalmed in shrouds and gauze that have long since rotted. He’s seen—and used—the dungeons that are known to the public, the usual cells and rack. And then, he’s seen are other dungeons deeper down, the hidden ones with child-sized shackles. After Edelgard had returned, her hair white and her heart resolute, he’d spent weeks wandering the dungeons, scouring every inch to find where she had been hidden. When he finally found it, many years ago, he came across a cell with a lifeless body in it. Even with its brown hair covering its face and several stages of decomposition, he was easily able to identify the body as Alban von Hresvelg, Edelgard’s older brother. In his ignorant youth, Hubert had been too afraid to touch the body, struck with silly notions that it would somehow come alive and grasp his arm. So instead, he had sat there for hours, it had felt like, forcing himself to look at the decomposing body and come to terms with what had happened. 

Today, he descends the stairs not to visit the crypts nor to look at the rotting bodies of children long forgotten. He’s here to work, decreased responsibilities be damned.

There’s a map hung on the wall of one of the dungeons Those Who Slither in the Dark used to infest, a map of an older Fodlan. He always counter references it with the modern maps when making any strategic decisions based on geography—a fool’s mistake would be to confront one on the terrain they stored their secret weapons on. 

As he descends the stairs with his torch, a figure ascends them, torchless, their soft footfalls drawing ever nearer. Hubert has grown so accustomed to hiding his fear that he’s almost not able to recognize it.

The figure stops in front of him, only a few steps down. “Good evening, young Minister Vestra,” the figure says. The stairway is so narrow that they cannot pass without turning to one side and pressing against the wall.

“Good evening, Lord Arundel.”

“The hour is quite late, isn’t it?” Arundel tells him rather than asks, his voice dripping with forced civility. 

“Never too late to do the Emperor’s biddings.”

“Is that so?” Arundel speaks slowly, a smile slipping onto his face. Hubert rankles at being openly mocked, but he knows when to keep quiet about it. “Don’t stay up too late, Minister Vestra. Good servants don’t stick their hands where they don’t belong.”

Hubert thinks of spitting on the man’s shoes when he bows to him. “I am only performing my duties, my lord.” Arundel waits with a raised eyebrow until Hubert grits his teeth and puts his back to the wall to make space for him.

“Very good,” Arundel tells him and squeezes past him in the unlit stairwell to proceed upwards. 

Hubert watches him for a few moments. Death ℾ warms his fingertips. He could kill him here, he thinks. 

No, he couldn’t. He knows he couldn’t. Any number of things could go wrong. Oh, how simple it would all be to strike that man down here and now. But Hubert has a plan, an order in which the killing needs to happen, and Arundel’s death grounds are not this staircase, not today.

When he finally turns to further descend the stairs, Arundel’s voice echoes again in the cold, murky pathway.

“I almost forgot—congratulations are in order.”

“Huh?” Hubert says, smartly, whipping back around to see Arundel standing too close to him. Though Hubert is normally taller than him, the single step between them means Arundel now looms over him. 

“A wedding band will soon be playing for you, won’t it?”

Ah, yes. Hubert tries not to look surprised. What does this vermin have business doing bringing up the engagement? “If you worry marriage will distract me from my responsibilities, it will not.”

“That’s what they all say, isn’t it?” Arundel laughs in the way Hubert has heard himself laugh all too many times. “No, quite the opposite, actually. I and a few,” he pauses again, another smirk, “ _friends_ of mine were quite pleased to hear about it. We are ever so happy for you.”

Happy? Why would…? Hubert’s head spins, and he says nothing.

“So, that’s all I meant. Congratulations are in order. I think that your marriage is going to do wonders for a united Fodlan.”

Hubert’s shoulders feel so heavy he fears his arms may fall off. The torch is too wet in his hands, between the natural moisture of the dungeons and the clammy sweat starting to build, and he grips it tighter so it won’t slip. 

Why would the marriage make them happy? Is it simply because they believe he’ll be out of their way living in Derdriu rather than Enbarr? He had thought he uprooted their operations in the Empire enough that it was prescient to move on to other areas, but perhaps his absence would let them build up strength once again? Or was it something even more sinister than that? With all of their influence, could it be that this, all of this, the wedding, was all planned by _them_? Had whoever he was to be married to already been replaced by one of their false humans?

Hubert takes a step back, and his footing falters, missing a stair. Arundel’s hand latches onto his arm, righting him with a single point of crushing contact. He smiles, removes his hand, and uses it to brush against the shoulder of Hubert’s uniform, cleaning it of non-existent dust.

“Do be careful. We wouldn’t want to give the Alliance spoiled goods. And I would so hate to send someone other than you. You’re the perfect man for the job, for one thing. And it would be unforgivably rude to back out, for the other. Rude to the Alliance, and rude to _me _, now that I’ve told you how happy it would make me.” Arundel’s pleasant tone mocks him. Ferdinand would probably commend him for his artful skills at making small talk. “Why, if you don’t go through with it now that I’ve told you that I want it to happen, your reluctance could so easily be misconstrued as disrespect, even defiance, against me and my people. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we? If I ever thought you were defying us. Well. I’d hate for anything unpleasant to be necessary, for you or those close to you. We’ve already lost too many Adrestian citizens to the Church, as it is. This is supposed to be a time of healing, is it not?” Arundel chuckles again, sounding every bit the indulgent uncle he was supposed to be to Edelgard, instead of like the monster that he is. “Now, goodnight, Minister Vestra.”__

__And then, Arundel starts climbing up the stairs again, moving swiftly through the darkness and leaving only the sound of footsteps behind him._ _

__Hubert's body moves for him and his mind struggles to hold on, hoisting the still-burning torch and further descending the stairs._ _

__No. Arundel held no power over him. Arundel was nothing more than a nuisance. A monster losing power, and desperate to keep it through whatever petty intimidation tactics he had left on hand. Him and his people? He didn’t have any left. Hubert was killing them off one by one. It was Hubert who was winning this war. He was. He could win this war even if he was distracted by nobility lessons, he could win this war even if he was married. Winning this war was about all he’s done with the past fifteen years of his life._ _

__He wasn’t a child now. The things Arundel said, they couldn’t unnerve him anymore. He was taller, stronger, more deadly. He’s dedicated years to learning all of the weaknesses of Thales and his kind. The beast that wore Volkhard von Arundel’s skin was just an old monster, his person suit slipping off, at the edge of his too-long life._ _

__Hubert walks down to his map and forces himself to look at it despite how his mind wanders._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh you didn't think this was going to be all fluffy and fun, did you?


	5. Great Tree Moon, Week 2, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected visitor introduces a new caveat to the marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe we're at chapter 5!! idk, 5 just feels like a number of note, ya know?
> 
> you all are so kind!!! your comments keep me going! thank you so much <3
> 
> as always, all the thanks to my lovely beta, [GuiltyBystanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyBystanders/pseuds/GuiltyBystanders). my best friend in the world!

Hubert doesn’t tell anyone of his interaction with Arundel. He plans to tell Edelgard at first but decides against it after some mulling over. Her war was over. This was Hubert’s battle, and it was not the first time Arundel had threatened him in code, nor would it be the last. He considers telling Ferdinand, while they begin their lesson on some miserable Alliance sport that involves hitting balls into holes while on horseback. As both the Prime Minister and the mentor preparing him for this possible trap of a marriage, it might be prescient for him to know. Ultimately he decides against that too—if it’s an empty threat not important enough to bother Edelgard with, then he won’t burden Ferdinand either. Still, he keeps replaying his meeting with Arundel, trying to parse out any more clues to Those of Slither in the Dark’s motives or plans. Turning over the conversation in his head is far more interesting—and important, for that matter—than paying attention to the rules of a game he has no intention of ever spectating, let alone playing. 

It’s not unusual for Hubert to get an unexpected summons from Edelgard in the middle of the day, even with his lessened workload. It’s happened a few times now, Byleth knocking on the door of the makeshift classroom during a lesson to tell either him or Ferdinand that their presence was required in Edelgard’s bedroom office. So it is not the request that surprises both of them this time, but the location of the meeting. 

“The throne room?” Ferdinand asks, beating Hubert to the punch.

“Yes,” Byleth replies, giving no further information or explanation. How typical of her.

They follow Byleth to the throne room without further questioning, because what else are they supposed to do? Hubert chafes at the lack of information, at stepping in blind to a possible trap. But, even though he still had his doubts about their former professor, she’s proven more than a few times that she can be trusted. To some extent. As much as Hubert is capable of trusting someone. But then again, he doesn’t trust Byleth nearly to the same extent he would Ferdinand or Edelgard. With the former professor’s _stellar_ personality, he doesn’t know if he would notice if she was replaced with a shapeshifter.

The throne room is dusty when they get there. It hasn’t been used with any degree of frequency for about four years now. There are no candles lit, the room dim. The only lighting leaks in from small windows high up in the architecture, leaving Edelgard’s throne in the dark. The hall is large, in a way that always impressed Hubert as a child. Now, all he can do is compare the decadent space of the room to the crammed maid’s room he and Ferdinand spend their mornings and afternoons in, to whatever poor servant that lived there before. 

Edelgard looks small whenever she sits on the throne. The backboard towered over her father, but for her, it’s even larger. Her cape is draped across one of the throne’s arms, and she looks neither nervous nor uncomfortable. Perhaps whatever news that came would not be terrible.

There’s another person in the room. Short but built, like Caspar. Another veteran, maybe. Not someone Hubert recognizes, but their light pink hair brings an anxious knot to Hubert’s stomach.

“Good afternoon, Minister Vestra, Minister Aegir,” Edelgard says to them, uncharacteristically official. Hubert looks at the guest again while he bows to Edelgard. A diplomat, then. “Let me introduce you to Lord Bertram von Goneril.” The knot in Hubert’s stomach ties itself a little tighter. Marrying Hilda von Goneril is not the worst-case scenario—his little chat with Arundel proved that—but in this moment it sure feels like it.

Hubert knows Ferdinand’s eyes are also on this new guest and flounders over whether he should implement his new lessons or not. He desperately wants to intimidate the man until he cowers and squeaks out whatever task he’s been given, but he suspects Ferdinand would probably want him to reach out his hand to shake. 

He attempts to find a mid-ground. He glowers when he sticks out a hand, and as Bertram shakes his, he realizes that the fifty-odd times Ferdinand has made him practice shaking hands has actually paid off. He returns Bertram’s clammy weak handshake with a firm one of his own and lets it linger for a moment. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of one of House Goneril here at Enbarr?” He lets his voice drip into its usual menacing persona.

Bertram, much shorter than Hubert, shrinks a bit. Good. “I, just…” he begins bumbling.

“He came to discuss some matters about your engagement,” Edelgard helps the man out. What a spoilsport. “And I thought you might want to hear what he told me before you continue your lessons.” 

“Hm?” asks Hubert, looking at the young man expectantly.

Bertram fumbles again, looking at Hubert, and then back at Edelgard, “No, uh, introductions first?” 

“I don’t see how introduction will help you—”

“Hubert, where are your manners?” Ferdinand exclaims beside him. He redirects his glare, tinged with murderous malice, at Ferdinand, but he proves much more resilient in the face of it than Bertram. “I am so sorry, young master Goneril.” Ah, he was quite young, wasn’t he? “You will have to forgive Minister Vestra, he is out of practice. Not to worry for the wedding, though, I am giving him the proper training befitting a noble preparing for marriage.”

He was going to do this here? Just, in front of everybody? Hubert glances around. Well, everybody was only Edelgard and Bertram. And Byleth, Hubert supposes, sneaky as she was.

“Now, Hubert, introduce yourself to him.” Hubert raises a disdainful eyebrow, but Ferdinand is unfazed. “Go on,” Ferdinand says, waving his hand towards Bertram. 

“Actually,” Bertram says, waving his own hand in a signal of refusal, “it’s okay, he doesn’t need to do anything that, um—”

“No, no, he really must. Shake his hand again, Hubert.” 

Hubert rolls his eyes. It isn’t even embarrassing anymore. It’s not like this pipsqueak, who obviously had more muscle than he did bravery, could do anything about his behavior. 

He shakes Bertram's hand again, and his grip is even weaker than the first time. Pitiful. “Good afternoon, Lord Goneril. My name is Hubert von Vestra, Minister of Empirical Affairs here in Enbarr, and this,” he uses the hand he had just shaken with to wave towards Ferdinand, “is Ferdinand von Aegir, Prime Minister.” 

He looks at Ferdinand, who smiles back at him. “Very good, except next time, introduce me before you introduce yourself, as I hold a higher position than you do, technical—”

Edelgard pipes in from where she sits at the throne, and it’s only all the years that Hubert’s known her that allows him to detect boredom and slight annoyance in her stoic expression. “Please, Ministers. Let Bertram deliver the information he’s been sent to.” She looks at both of them ominously. “I have reason to believe it would interest both of you heavily.” 

“Go ahead, Lord Goneril,” Ferdinand says, at approximately the same time Hubert says, “Have at it, then.”

“Oh,” Bertram says, looking at both of them, “well,” he looks at Edelgard, “so,” he then seems to decide that the floor was the lesser of the evils, for his gaze lands there. “I was sent here as a diplomat, by my older cousin, Duke Holst Goneril, about some further information about the, um, partnership.” 

Bertram looks at Edelgard, who gives him an approving nod, and then he continues, looking back down at his boots. 

“There’s still the rest of the month for both of the candidates to become completely sure about their intentions, but the Roundtable, thought it would be—I forget the actual word they used—but, like, kind of unfair to leave you in the dark about this matter.” 

Flames, he sounded like Bernadetta but with none of the endearing qualities. Hubert wants to yell at him to just get his words out already but keeps his trap shut. It’s painful how he didn’t even need to torment young Bertram for him to stumble over his words so. 

“And, so, they sent me here to tell you that, uh. How do I put this? That the candidate that the Roundtable chose is actually, uh. A man?” 

Bertram's words hang in silence for a few moments. They’re too quiet to echo in the large throne room, but Hubert imagines he can hear them reverberating around. He doesn’t know why Bertram phrased it as a nervous question, when there’s obviously no question about it.

“But!” Bertram continues excitedly, after a sigh of relief at finally getting his words out, “I was told to tell you that the other candidate, the, uh, male candidate, was entirely agreeable to you also being a man.”

Hubert looks down at Bertram. Well, there was no use in shooting the messenger.

Edelgard speaks up before Bertram can attempt to continue the rest of his monologue. “What Bertram was telling me earlier was that the Roundtable wanted to get a confirmation that our candidate was also agreeable to this caveat.”

“They said that, uh,” Bertram mumbles. “They said that I was to stay here a week, for you to think it over or select a different candidate.”

“I will have accommodations set u—” Edelgard begins to speak. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Hubert interrupts, crossing his arms. “I am agreeable to the caveat.” 

“You are?” Bertram asks, sounding genuinely curious. 

“You _are_?” Ferdinand asks, sounding a strange mix between surprised and miffed.

“Yes, I am,” Hubert tells Bertram. “Now, you are free to go as you like.”

Bertrams eyes—pink and wide as saucers, Hubert notices—gaze up at him in a mix of fear and awe. Then, he looks towards Ferdinand. Then, back at Hubert. “They said I was supposed to stay a week, though.”

Hubert says, “Well, you can go home early now.”

“I don’t… I’m supposed to...” Bertram looks around again. “They didn’t tell me the protocol for this.”

“They didn’t need to, Bertram,” Edelgard assures him. “We will give you accommodations in the castle for as long as you see fit.” She stands up, out of her chair, adjusting her cape behind her. 

Edelgard knows how to command a room. When she steps forward, everyone is silent, eyes locked on her.

“You will stay here for at least a week, as Minister Vestra is going to think— _actually think_ —about these new conditions.” When Hubert opens his mouth to speak, she says, definitively, “No disagreements.” She turns to Bertram, who was barely taller than her when standing straight and now looks even shorter with his meekly hunched shoulders. “Now, Bertram, let me and my teacher set up your rooms for you.”

And then Edelgard and Byleth lead Bertram out of the throne room—while Bertram argues against the Emperor personally preparing his rooms in his stuttering, panicked voice—leaving Ferdinand and Hubert alone in the cavernous expanse of the dim room.

The throne room feels different without a monarch. The space opens up even more and suddenly Hubert finds himself side-eyeing the shadows cast by the long pillars around the exterior of the room. The muted sunlight from the high windows leaves shining, rectangular boxes of illumination on the elaborate carpet. The dust Edelgard, Byleth, and Bertram kick up in their exits settle in the long silence.

“You are actually agreeable to this?” Ferdinand asks him eventually, his hand coming to rest on one hip. There are no chairs in the throne room except for the throne itself, and neither of them dare sit.

“I don’t see why not.” He crosses his arms, thinking of it as a stance based in cool disinterest rather than one of discomfort. 

“I suppose I… had not thought you were the type,” says Ferdinand, and then he’s pacing like this is one of their tactical meetings from the war. He carves a route in the dust through the sunlight and the shadow.

“I’ve made my intentions quite clear, that’s undeniable.”

“Clear—? What exactly, pray tell, are your intentions?” Ferdinand flings his arms about while he talks. With his furrowed brow, it looks like he’s attempting to solve a puzzle or figure out a particularly difficult strategy. 

“As I’ve told you many times, I am going to get married to whomever the Roundtable intends to marry me off to. It’s as simple as that.” It should be. So what if it was a man? It’s not like Hubert is going to fall in love with his future spouse either way. 

“It’s just—Hubert.” Ferdinand looks at him while he paces. Long ago, Hubert would have found his constant movement distracting, but he’s used to it by now. He stands his own ground, though, feet planted and sure. “Have you considered what people are going to think? How it might get in the way of your duties to the Empire if everyone knows that you… And, really, I suppose I just… I did not think that you were the type.” 

Hubert laughs at that and it comes out malicious, even if he’s not sure that was his intent. “I didn’t think you were the type to look down on those in union with one of their own gender.”

“What?” Ferdinand stops where he marches, and turns on his heel to look at Hubert. “I am not, really, I am not, it is only that—”

“You would think of me so differently if I was married to a man?” Hubert had never considered it before. Getting married at all seemed nonessential to him, and even in this unlikely arrangement, he cares little about the partner, only the political outcome. He was surprised to hear the new circumstances of the marriage, sure, but he’s made his decision to get married. Who he’s married to matters little. He may as well stick to it.

“I would not! I am merely. I just…” He turns around, again, and resumes pacing. “Hubert, you could lose your position. Things will improve as we move towards a crestless society and procreation is less important, but it has only been a year. The things people will say…”

“Have I ever seemed the type to care what other people are going to say—or think for that matter—about me?” When he considers it, a Sabbatini partnership could actually be for the best. A purely political marriage, no romance expected. A union, more than a marriage. “I am going to do my duty, and the gender of my intended has little impact on that. I truly doubt that Edelgard is going to fire me for doing my job.”

“You… you are actually okay with this? Goddess, you are actually genuinely considering this.” Ferdinand sounds befuddled. Why is it always Hubert who has to screw his head on straight for him?

“I don’t understand your concern. This only changes the marriage for the better. At the very least, it will be good to be freed of our lessons all day. They were fun while they lasted, but there are more pressing matters to attend to—”

“Be freed of them? You mean to _cancel_ them?” Ferdinand changes the direction of his pacing, circling the thronelike he’s caught up in some perverse game of musical chairs.

“I don’t see why not,” Hubert follows Ferdinand’s pacing with his eyes while he talks. “They won’t be necessary anym—”

“So, what, you think that a male spouse is less deserving of respect? Of proper courting?” Ferdinand’s pace quickens.

“Well, it’s not like I’ll be expected to actually fall in love with them now.” 

“No!” Ferdinand shouts. “No, no, no!” It takes him only four no’s to cross the room into Hubert’s personal space, and then there’s a gloved finger jabbed against his chest. “I do not want to hear you talking like that. You are _not_ allowed to talk like that. You are going to court him, and you are going to do your damned hardest to fall in love with him!”

Hubert almost draws back from Ferdinand, but the outburst is so unexpected he stands his ground. He’s seen Ferdinand angry at him many times, perhaps more often than many would expect from a best friend. But now, unlike usual, he cannot place where Ferdinand’s frustration and anger comes from. It’s directed against Hubert, that much is for sure. The ruddy tinge to Ferdinand’s face, the finger shoved against Hubert’s chest. Even that focused look up at Hubert is directed, angry. But why? Hubert’s so familiar with knowing where Ferdinand’s anger comes from, so he can make an educated decision of whether or not to push his buttons more, but this was something else. “Ferdinand, I don’t think that—”

“Shut up!” When Ferdinand shouts, his head jolts with the force of it, his hair jumping about as if he was dancing or riding. “I will not hear it! You are—you _are_ going to fall in love with him. I cannot stand the thought of you in a loveless marriage, not to a woman, not to a man, not to anyone. You do _not_ deserve that, and if I can’t—if, if you are going to marry someone, you are going to at the very least open yourself to the possibility of falling in love with them!” 

Ferdinand turns around, his back to Hubert, facing the exit of the throne room. (Well, one of the many exits, but few outside of House Vestra knew of those.) Ferdinand begins to put his hair up in a huff. 

“I am going on a ride to cool off. Tomorrow, I expect you to be fully prepared and willing for your new, adapted lessons. I must change some things about my lesson plan given the new circumstances.” He finishes pulling his hair up, and then nods, somewhat at Hubert and somewhat at himself. “Good day, Hubert,” he says, definitively, and leaves the throne room quickly, leaving Hubert standing alone trying to process what in the blazes just happened.

* * *

“Ferdinand being angry at you is supposed to be news?” Dorothea is giving him about half of her attention, the rest turned to the mirror in her dressing room. She dabs a color on her face that matches her skin-tone and speaks loud over the pre-rehearsal bustle of the opera house. “That’s not even gossip.” 

“I told you, I don’t think it’s anger, per se,” Hubert says. He thinks back on Ferdinand’s speech, and even though it was mere hours ago, it feels like a distant memory. “I have no idea what it was.”

“Very helpful, Hubie.” She leans closer to the mirror when she smears the makeup below her eye, focusing. “You really make me do all the work, don’t you?”

“I’d think you’d celebrate any tidbit of emotional intel I let you in on.” He very easily could have stayed in the castle and buried himself in work again. But Dorothea knows… things about interpersonal connections. And so he finds himself questing out into Enbarr, tucked away against the wall of the Mittlefrank Opera house, trying to stay out of the way of the cast’s chaos, bustling even hours before their scheduled dress rehearsal.

“‘Emotional intel?’ You can’t just call gossip ‘intel’ and expect me to take it more seriously,” she laughs at him. “I suppose it’s an equal trade, in the end. You tell me all the hot gossip, and I take on the labor of fixing all of your emotional woes for you.”

Hubert nods at her, then notices she’s too distracted with a darker color she applies to the sides of her face to see. So, he says, “Yes, exactly. Sounds equal.”

Dorothea looks back at him, still holding the palette of various skin-colored toned powders in her hands. “Please tell me you’re joking. I know social cues aren’t your strong suit, but I couldn’t have made that any more sarcastic.” 

Hubert crosses his arms and shrugs, ignoring Dorothea’s long-suffering sigh. 

“Tell me the whole story, from the beginning. What happened that got him angry with you?”

Hubert recounts the scene in the throne room to her. The shrimpy Alliance representative, Edelgard’s regal attitude, the new caveat, Ferdinand’s ungrounded aggression. Dorothea stays quiet for the most of it, thank the stars, only listening. Hubert gets so caught up in his own story that he doesn’t notice the precise moment that Dorothea stops putting on her makeup and turns to look directly at him as he talks, only noticing her stare when he’s finished with his tale.

“Wait,” she says. “Wait, wait, wait.”

Hubert waits. 

“You’re getting married to a man?” she asks, finally, with not enough fanfare after her demands of waiting.

“It seems so.”

“And you’re just… you don’t care about that at all?” 

“It doesn’t really change anything, does it?” Hubert asks, or rather, states as he crosses his arms and leans against the wall beside Dorothea’s vanity table.

“Well, I—” Dorothea looks up at him. She only managed to put rouge on one cheek before stopping her makeup routine, and her face looks strangely uneven. “Hubert, are you attracted to both men and women?”

Hubert furrows his brow.

“Goddess. You haven’t even considered that yet, have you?”

Hubert again decides that silence is the least damning option. 

She pushes forth. “Are you interested in men?”

“I don’t see what difference it makes!” Hubert doesn’t look at her when he talks, instead uncrossing his arms so he can wave his hands about like Ferdinand. Usually, Ferdinand talks with his hands like so, it makes him appear nervous, less powerful. In this circumstance, Hubert is willing to make that sacrifice for an outlet to burn off his excess energy. “I’m getting married to someone, it has been decided! What difference does it make if it’s a woman or man?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to think about it. At least a little.” Dorothea looks back at herself in the mirror but doesn’t continue reapplying her makeup yet. “You always, well, whenever you talk about marriage or… you always spoke ill of it when you described a woman as your spouse. Is it any different with a man?”

Hubert looks at his hands. His gloves have gotten dirty over the course of the day, maybe from the throne room’s dust. There are stripes of grey on the palms. “I don’t know,” he says, quietly. 

“Hubert,” she says, and somehow, over the years, his full name on her tongue feels awkward, too serious compared to her usual nicknames. “This isn’t to say you need to like one more than the other, or even to like either at all, but—would you rather marry a man or woman?”

“How am I supposed to know?” He shrugs. Looks away from her and back out at the cast and crew preparing themselves. In his direct line of sight, an actor playing one of the ghosts is getting into costume. “It doesn’t make a difference to me. I told you during our school days and I told you at coffee last week. I’ll marry whoever Lady Edelgard tells me to marry.”

“Yes, but if you were marrying for love—” 

“I’m not,” says Hubert simply.

“But, if you were—” 

“I’m not!” he exclaims, hands fisting at his sides.

“Don’t fucking interrupt me!” Dorothea says, raising her voice. Hubert imagines that other actors have heard them and must be alarmed by her tone, but the world spins as usual, no one batting an eye. Dorothea turns away from her reflection and back at him. Her voice is gentler now. “Hubie, have you really never thought about falling in love?”

“I have!” he says immediately, defensive. “Just not…” Just not what?

Well. Has he ever really thought about falling in love? Not seriously. He’s had a few idle, fanciful delusions; fantasies of falling in love, perhaps. Or maybe those were just little snippets of operas he saw as a child sneaking into his mind as false memories. But even so, there are a few particular things that he can pinpoint that he might want. 

He’d like to experience a lover’s kiss, just once, he thinks. It’s hard to imagine, so foreign to his mind he can’t picture the feeling, but he thinks he would like it. Sometimes he wonders what it might be like to have someone bring him coffee late at night, kiss the side of his face. What it could be like to kiss someone in the gardens after time spent separated. To kiss a lover awake in the morning, with the dawn’s light peeking through dark curtains. 

Could that person, that theoretical lover be a man? 

Hubert doesn’t want to think about it. Because the situation he was in wasn’t about love, it was about marriage. There would be no gentle lover’s kisses, just a perfunctory pressing of lips at the end of the ceremony to seal the deal. (Ah, he must research if they marked marriages with a kiss in Alliance culture as well.) So why linger on it? Why think of who he could be kissing for love when there are other, more important things to think about? Shapeshifters in people costumes, wandering around unchecked? Arundel had implied as much. As much as he considers it an empty threat, he can’t take those words lightly. There isn’t the time for kissing a lover awake in the morning when Hubert shouldn’t even be sleeping in the first place.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Dorothea says, finally. Hubert realizes that the break between her question and his lack of reply went on for far too long. He reminds himself to get better at monitoring his face when lost in thought when his guard is down. If only he never started dropping his malicious persona in front of his friends. “Just, think about it, will you? A little?” she implores him. “You don’t need to figure everything out or come to any decision, but it can’t hurt to know that about yourself.”

“Perhaps.” 

Dorothea turns back towards the mirror and begins applying rouge to the other cheek. “Well, now I can see why Ferdinand got so angry at you earlier.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” she begins, “not only are you so willing to throw your life away without the slightest thought, but you decided undermining his sexuality was the best way of doing it.”

“Undermining?” 

She uses a small brush to paint purple against her eyelid. “You _are_ taking lightly one fundamental part of his identity that, as far as I understand it, is quite important to him.”

Hubert looks at her. He looks at the ghost actor getting into costume before darting his eyes back to her, looking for a change in her expression. Now she’s applying blue makeup, but that is it. “Ferdinand, is, uh. Likes men?” 

Dorothea looks up at him from where she sits at the vanity. Her eyes are wide, and with the new, bright outline of color, they look even bigger. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

Hubert shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean to… I just thought he must have told you that. You two are awfully close, and…” Dorothea trails off, catching her face in the mirror. She looks at herself for a few seconds, obviously lost in thought. As she thinks, the slight upturn of her lip turns into a smile. Then, she laughs. “Oh, he’s an idiot. He is such an idiot.”

“Finally, you see reason.”

“I should add that you’re even more stupid, somehow.” She turns around to face him and directed in his way, her smile looks more sinister, teasing. “Listen, it really wasn’t my place to divulge that information. I’ll apologize to him the next time we meet for tea. But, what’s done is done, and can’t be undone. You two are continuing your lessons, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And he said that he wants to, uh, change them in some way, right? Make them more suitable for a male partner?”

“That is correct.” 

“Good,” she says, that smile still etched on her face. “Now, I want you to use the lessons to figure out whether or not you’re attracted to men. Actually consider it. I’m sure whatever he teaches you will be… an adequate amount of exposure to intimacy between two men to provide you enough clues.”

“I don’t see why my theoretical attraction to men is relevant to this entirely political wedding.”

“Please stop talking, you’re only making yourself sound less intelligent,” she says, quite rudely. “While you’re at it, you better talk to him about his attraction to men. You can tell him I told you by accident because I did. Oh, you should also talk to Linhardt about it if you get a chance. I don’t think he’d mind at all my telling you, less effort for him. I’d talk to you about my own attraction to women, but you’re already looking at me like I’m sprouting a third head, so better to leave it to male-male attraction for now.” She stands up out of her chair, looking around her vanity, then removes two slips of paper wedged between jars of hair products and makeup kits. “ And, if all goes well, you might be needing these.” She holds out the papers towards him, and the weight of the conversation feels more palpable now that she stands in front of him instead of painting her face. They’re two tickets, it seems, with _complimentary_ written on them in red pen. “For opening night. Which is only about a week away. I know that Ferdinand must already have his own tickets, but I think, as per the lessons, it would be better for you to invite him to come see it yourself. Do you understand?”

He understands his directions, but can’t parse quite what she means. “I’m not sure…”

“Hubert,” she sighs. She puts the tickets into his hands herself, clasping her fingers over his to make sure he holds them tightly in his grasp and leaves them there, resting atop his dusty gloves. “I understand you’re just doing this for politics. I’m not trying to change that. But if you have the opportunity for happiness along with furthering the Empire’s goals, what is the point of denying yourself that? You don’t have to do anything that different from before. Just think about it instead of shying away, if or when it comes up.” 

It’s not in Hubert’s nature to let himself dally on such irrelevant thoughts, not anymore. But when he considers all of the reactions of all of his friends, of his emperor, since this process has started. Well. What is the harm in trying, for at least a little while? “There might be something to that.”

“Very good,” she says, and gives him a nod, before releasing his hands and sitting back down. “Now, it would be helpful if you got out of my hair. I’m only marking tonight, so this rehearsal really is only for costume and makeup, and this conversation has just about doubled the time it’s supposed to take.” 

“I see. Then, I will take my leave.” 

“Not even a thanks? Goddess, Ferdie really has his work cut out for him,” she grumbles as Hubert starts to walk away, tucking the tickets into the inside pocket of his jacket.

* * *

The streets of Enbarr are surprisingly quiet come midnight. As a child, they’d be full of drunks marching around with bottles in hand. Tonight, the air is cool and clean, and no one has passed the dimly lit side street corner Hubert lurks in. There’s a magic lantern around the corner, and it casts shifting shadows on the building wall opposite him. Hubert’s spy is late.

Usually, a spy running late would be a cause of concern. He’d worry about whether they were snatched by some monster possessing a human’s body, or killed by a regular human ignorant of their importance. But he was winning this war, and he trusted his spies.

And there were other things to think about.

He’s never thought much of being attracted to anyone. He has desires, of course, as is typical of most men his age. But he assumed general sexual desire to be different than attraction. In Garreg Mach, there were students he found attractive, of course, but they all seemed so young then, fussing over their grades and insipid love lives as he and his emperor planned a war for the fate of all Fodlan. And it’s not as if Hubert was lusting over anyone on the battlefield, worked to the bone and injured as he always was during that time. But... 

He thinks of the male Alliance students of the Golden Deer House. While at least now he’s escaped destiny’s cruel chance of a nuptial with Hilda, there were other sour options. 

Raphael Kirsten was a diligent worker. He had an upbeat attitude, and would almost be painfully easy to manipulate. Furthermore, as a commoner, their marriage could be a positive outlook for a new Fodlan.

But, no, Dorothea said not to solely consider Fodlan, but rather, Hubert’s own attraction as well. Raphael was… brawny, which Hubert supposes he doesn’t mind. Physical strength was something he lacked, and so it was easy to admire in others. But Raphael was entirely too big. And something about his smile and uncouth attitude pissed Hubert off. He’d rather see the man weep from fear than joy.

And then, there was the exact opposite of the spectrum. The thought of marrying Lorenz Hellman Gloucester made Hubert want to vomit in his mouth. While Hubert can see why plenty titter admiringly over the admittedly shapely curves of his form, his personality was abhorrent in every possible way. As Hubert remembers him from school, there was nothing appealing about him in any sense of the word. If Hubert had it his way, he’d have Lorenz killed just for the spectacle of it, no matter how useful those opportunistic Gloucesters were during the war. And the marriage of two nobles who held important, hereditary roles in their respective territories was the exact opposite of everything Hubert intends for the future. 

That leaves Ignatz Victor. 

Hubert racks his brain, but can’t think of anything negative to say about the boy. He was scrawny, sure, but attraction wasn’t all in appearance. His appreciation for art, his gumption in battle, his humble background, all of it was in some way admirable. He had an interesting attitude about him, if Hubert remembers correctly, nervousness with an underlying confidence that sometimes bled through. He’s always had some sort of affection in his heart when it comes to the smaller and meeker, perhaps born from the way they usually feared him no differently than they feared everything. Hubert would be interested to see where he’s ended up over the years when it comes to that balance between soft and bold since the start and end of the war. 

Yes, it’s been years. Ignatz, no, all of them, have surely changed in the time since he met them last, as much as Ferdinand and Bernadetta have. The schoolmates of years past seem like children to him, when by now, they’re all certainly adults. 

But this is assuming he’s engaged to one of his former classmates. He thinks of smaller and meeker. Bertram’s arrival had tossed more than a few wrenches into the situation. The idea that his intended was surely a schoolmate was a weak one. There were any number of cousins and siblings and step-families he’s never heard of that are all equally viable. Imagining that his betrothed will surely be an old schoolmate is as childish a thought as the youths he still imagined his classmates as. Bertram himself was a likely option—a way for the Alliance to allow the betrothed to meet ahead of time without breaking the terms of the agreement. It would certainly explain why he had been so fixated on formally meeting Hubert, a reason other than fear he averted his eyes. Or perhaps he himself didn’t know yet, and would run screaming as soon as he found out. Hubert would prefer that it wasn’t Bertram, though—on top of an awkward first meeting, there was such a thing as _too_ meek, and having Hilda for an in-law was only marginally better than having her as a wife.

He’s jolted from his thoughts by the faded noise of the clocktower striking one in the morning across the city. He’s been waiting for two hours now.

His spy, among the most punctual on his staff, is nowhere to be found. 

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: (almost) all the cards on the table. 
> 
> oh, yeah, i may take a week off sometime in the next month to hopefully write a thing or two for ferdibert week. so don't be put off if there's a week without an update, i still have all of you in mind! (also i may prioritize this over ferdibert week anyway, we shall see!)


	6. Great Tree Moon, Week 3, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (almost) all cards on the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took me longer than expected, and a few more rewrites than expected, but i think it was worth it in the end! also a long one, so buckle in. also, i think with this chapter this fic is breaking 50k, which is....kind of scary. but i'm happy about that! also, with it I'll have posted over 100k words of fe3h fanfic since i started in may!!! :-0 
> 
> thank you so much for all of your lovely comments. i really can't describe how much i love them!
> 
> also, i'm adding an "internalized homophobia" tag to the fic as a whole, but it's most specifically for this chapter. just be warned!

When Hubert wakes up on this sweltering Tuesday morning, he knows three things to be true:  
1\. One of his spies is missing.  
2\. Ferdinand von Aegir likes men.  
3.The gardens are horrendously overgrown.  
He senses this last truth before he sees it, the morning’s sunlight greeting him with a stuffed-up nose and a headache that only worsens when he sits up from his bed.

As he dresses, he assesses these truths. 

It very well might be that two of his spies are missing. Another one’s correspondence has been eerily scant the past month. Hubert would usually prefer to give his subordinates the benefit of the doubt, but he’s let the problem go on for far too long. He would have to send some other spies to their location to track them down. Torture them, perhaps, on the basis of their disappearance and the recent resurgence of threat from Those Who Slither. Dispose of them, if they couldn’t prove they were the same person. And then there was Arundel, slithering somewhere around Enbarr. Perhaps the spies keeping tabs on him had also been replaced. If so, that would give him free rein of the entire continent, to say nothing of the secrets he could uncover in Enbarr.

After buttoning his jacket—with plans to head to the kitchens and prepare himself a good four or so cups of coffee before getting to work on solving the spy problem—he opens his glove drawer. 

On one side of the drawer, he stores light gloves of a variety of off-white and cream tones. His everyday gloves, he would explain to the average person, casually. To keep up appearances and hide the true nature of his work, he’d tell those he wished to scare. But the other side of the drawer was to store fear. There lies a myriad of dark gloves. Some so thin it feels as though he’s wearing nothing, allowing for nimble precision with a knife. Some so heavy that no matter what substances might touch them, his hands will never dampen. 

One side of his drawer for maintaining a facade of civility, as ill-kept that facade may be. The other side for his true purposes, heavy and dark enough no bloodstains would ever show. 

So the questions of the day face him. Which sort of gloves would he choose?

One of his spies is missing. Two, most likely. There are answers to be found—spines to be stretched, teeth to be pulled, fingernails to be peeled. Dark spells that needed casting. Potentially, there were hostages, delicate situations with life balanced a hair's breadth from death. There were civilians, perhaps, who didn’t know that a war still raged on even in their quaint, rebuilding towns. It’s a bloody, delicate matter, the kind he can entrust to no one but himself.

Ferdinand von Aegir likes men. According to Dorothea, this information required further analysis. There was etiquette to be learned, introspection to be done. Dorothea thought that there might be realizations to be made, further experimentation to be carried out. Her hypothesis was that he, Hubert, may also like men, and she believed it must be tested. 

Which gloves to choose should be obvious. Spies are far more important than Ferdinand’s irrelevant personal details and if they hypothetically relate to him. He doesn’t want to think about sexuality, at all. He doesn’t want to do Ferdinand’s stupid fucking lessons.

There was the third option, maybe. The gardens were, after all, quite overgrown. Just standing up makes him feel ill, and he’s stuck breathing through his mouth. The pollen in the air feels like a tangible fog, and he can taste it in his still unbrushed mouth. 

He could refuse, maybe. Stay inside, let himself be sick. He could forgo gloves altogether. Sit alone in bed. Maybe read that book Ferdinand kept complaining he hadn’t read yet. The idea is alluring. 

But Hubert? Left alone with his own bare hands? Taking a day off work? It was absurd, not alluring. There was nothing Hubert wanted less than to be stuck for a whole day with his own body. His decreased workload must be getting to his head worse than he thought if he was considering taking a day off at a time so crucial.

He looks at the gloves. 

He should go back to his work. Lessons could wait. Though the timing was unfortunate, what with how they ended their last conversation, Ferdinand would understand once he explained the circumstance. Hubert’s sexuality could wait. For his whole life, if Hubert had his way. 

But, like muscle memory from these last two weeks, his hands reach for the white gloves. He heads down to the gardens for this morning’s lesson. The spies were important of course, but it wouldn’t do for the Minister of the Imperial Household to upset the Prime Minister. Their constant bickering already unsettled unseasoned diplomats like Bertram, and as much pleasure as Hubert took in their friendly skirmish of wits, Ferdinand had told him many times of how their friendship looked to an outside observer. These lessons were strengthening their friendship, creating a bond that the entire country would benefit from for years to come. As such a public member of imperial politics—his role in the war meant Hubert is in the spotlight in a way few von Vestras ever had been—he must cultivate a positive reputation with the general populace just as much as he needs a negative one for his interrogations. Spies were, by nature, sneaky and suspicious. It was their literal job to be, so combatting that reputation took work. Furthermore, as precious as each other Hubert’s spies were, he had to keep in mind they were expendable. 

He’s learned that the most on the battlefield. All of the Black Eagle Strike Force had, even in their schooldays at Garreg Mach. With each of their first battalion, they’d been forced to learn that soldiers had to die, sometimes. He remembers the faces his now-friends then-classmates had made, the first time someone they commanded fell. It was the weight of their privileged position as leaders—it would be at their hands people met their bitter ends to serve their goals. As much as he likes these particular spies, he can’t let himself get too attached to them. Of course, it would be best to limit his feelings on everyone around him, including Ferdinand, but he could only expect so much of himself every day. 

Thinking through all the diplomatic repercussions, Hubert is certain that the missing spy situation could wait, for now.

* * *

“A simple lesson for this morning, albeit an important one. How to stroll,” says Ferdinand, already glimmering with sweat under the unpleasantly bright sun but unbothered by the pollen even as he stands in the castle gardens, a smile on his lips. The frustration in his eyes yesterday has sunk away, and Hubert would think their argument had never happened based on Ferdinand’s current perkiness. 

Perhaps the argument was not as bad as he thought. Just another one of their usual spats? Hubert could simply have been thrown by it because at the time he had lacked the context to understand why it was happening. But Ferdinand’s anger had been authentic and unbridled, Hubert thinks, remembering the feeling of Ferdinand’s finger jabbing his chest to make his point.

Dorothea had insisted that he use these lessons to try and discover something about himself. He would rather not. Besides, it was strolling. _Strolling_. He knows Ferdinand will quibble about some way he’s doing it incorrectly, but it was just walking fancy when you got down to it. Whatever little romance could be found in taking a walk together—something Hubert already doesn’t understand, how simply walking around was romantic—would be stripped away by irrelevant rules and the thick haze of pollen. 

Before Hubert can say anything, decide if he should acknowledge what happened yesterday or just let it be, Ferdinand takes his arm in his, linked like the midway point between them, and begins leading him further into the gardens. Hubert follows along gainfully, letting Ferdinand decide the pace.

“I know what you are thinking,” Ferdinand says finally after the silence has grown too thick to bear.

“You don’t,” Hubert sniffles tersely.

“I am not stupid. You are thinking about how my lessons are no longer important, because of the new nature of your marriage. What I am teaching you would be expected of any married couple, whether their relationship is romantic or strictly political. Whatever their genders might be. It is still marriage.”

Hubert sighs. There’s a spot behind his eyes that aches. “I’m not going to argue,” he says, more to himself than Ferdinand. 

“Good.” He feels Ferdinand exhale at that, but contrary to his words, it seems almost disappointed. Then, he realizes that their bodies are quite close. Because of the way that Ferdinand is clutching his arm—which admittedly Hubert recognizes from the way noble couples parade around the grounds after fancy dinners—he can feel the body heat from beneath the layers of Ferdinand’s clothing, can feel the intakes of his breath. Like dancing, it feels too close.

Ferdinand von Aegir likes men. 

To be fair, it shouldn’t be surprising. Ferdinand likes a lot of things. He was the type of person to actually enjoy things around him—armor, tea, wine, opera—instead of the type of person Hubert was, who found more pleasure in disliking things than liking them. Ferdinand likes lots of things and enjoys them passionately. So why should his romantic or sexual desires be any different? Even if his personal tastes were a bit unconventional. 

They make their way through the gardens, Ferdinand nattering on about how one was supposed to walk the paths from the outside inwards. Hubert finds himself staring at the cobblestone path in front of them, his mind wandering—not to his usual topics, the pressing and dangerous matters of his work he normally thinks about, but to mundane, inconsequential details. Ferdinand’s arm continues to feel warm against Hubert’s. Hot, even, as the sun begins to command the morning skies. Hubert’s hands begin to sweat through his gloves, and the white fabric doesn’t hide the discoloration as the black would have.

Ferdinand was gay. Or, liked both, or whatever.

Hubert knew such things existed. It wasn’t an entirely new idea to him, homosexuality and the like. He knew the words children sneered at each other in crowded halls, knew of the dimly lit bars in downtown Enbarr where one could find men in sheer tops. It was Hubert’s job to know the ins-and-outs of the underbelly of the city—of all cities, really. Know the clientele, know who might see things than usually go unseen. Know who might have loose lips if offered a bit of gold. Know who had a secret to exploit. So, there were gay people. Of course there were. 

He even remembers hearing of Linhardt’s tastes all those years ago, when the topic of school crushes graced the tongues of students in the dining hall. He knew of the Death Knight—Jeritza’s preferences. Nothing too surprising. He certainly never thought about it when interacting with either of them.

So why was he struggling to think about anything else—any of the _very important_ anything else’s—with Ferdinand’s arm wrapped around his?

Dorothea had told him to assess his own attraction, to really consider it, but he can think of few things in the world he’d rather do less at the moment. In fact, he’d rather not think about what he had learned about Ferdinand either. 

And see, it should only be information. Hubert’s lifeblood is information, and he should be pleased to have a new tidbit. His knowledge of Linhardt, Jeritza, or even now Dorothea’s sexuality was nothing more than intel he could leverage against them if need be. He knew Jeritza’s type, knew exactly the sort of assassin he’d send if he wanted to kill Jeritza (or the operative, for that matter). He knew of Linhardt’s childhood crush, the friendships he could end with the knowledge. Since finding out about Dorothea, he’s already started scheming how he could utilize her attraction against her if push came to shove. But not with Ferdinand.

Being gay wasn’t noble. That went without saying. It didn’t subscribe to the nobility Ferdinand von Aegir so frequently lauded. Nobles were supposed to quietly get married to whoever their parents told them to. Not have interest in laying with members of the same sex. That must be what’s throwing him off about this—Linhardt, Jeritza, and Dorothea all accepted being perceived as unconventional. Ferdinand, very much not.

Hubert looks at Ferdinand, explaining the proper pathways to take while they stroll through the carnations, and his head spins from the pollen. Ferdinand has gotten older. It’s obvious he hadn’t shaved that morning, orange hairs pricking up at his jawline and around his mouth. There are little wrinkles that have begun to sit at the sides of his mouth around his cheeks. He used to be so small and annoying, a short and oafish sweaty mess trying to wiggle into Hubert and Edelgard’s plans with no knowledge of what that really meant. Had he been gay then, too? 

It doesn’t occur to Hubert until a few minutes later when they’re parading by the forget-me-nots, that he can just ask. 

“I saw Dorothea yesterday,” he says. 

Ferdinand doesn’t reduce the painfully slow pace of their strolling, and Hubert promptly realizes that he has no idea what Ferdinand was saying previous to that and quite probably revealed just to what extent he wasn’t listening. 

Ferdinand only laughs. Always so happy to babble on and on even if no one was listening. “In the city?”

“At Mittlefrank, actually. Dress rehearsal.” Hubert tries to not think about the two tickets laying on his bedside table for the opening night of _Sabbatini_. He tries not to think about anything, and wipes at his nose with his handkerchief, a task made more difficult with one arm still locked with Ferdinand’s.

“Ah, how wonderful!” Ferdinand says aloud, too loud, and Hubert feels his arm squeeze around Hubert’s further. 

Hubert looks out at the flowers to avoid Ferdinand’s gaze, but just looking at them makes his nose run, so he looks at his shoes instead. 

“She told me some information about you that she was not at liberty to reveal.” 

Ferdinand laughs anxiously. “And what was that?” he asks, their slow pace quickening ever so slightly. Hubert hadn’t even noticed just how slowly they were walking, so deep in his own mind and so stuffed with mucus. Was this what strolling was about? 

He takes a pause, trying to avoid fumbling his words. He couldn’t make it sound like something that he had any opinion about. Just a fact, like it would be with Linhardt or Jeritza or Dorothea. “About your liking men.”

“Oh.” Ferdinand’s pace slows to a stop, and they halt in the lilac and lily garden, just in front of the plaque with the botanical names. 

Time draws on strangely, and Hubert uses his handkerchief to cover his expression while he sniffles. 

“I hope that does not make you think any differently of me,” Ferdinand says, quietly. Hubert can’t decode his expression at first, but eventually, it hits him. It’s afraid. Hubert realizes that he hasn’t seen fear on Ferdinand’s face in years, not since they were children and Ferdinand actually fell for his villainous persona.

“Not in the slightest,” Hubert says, quickly. Maybe too quickly. “She actually…” he stops himself, thinking. 

Is it in his best interest to tell Ferdinand of Dorothea’s… suspicions about Hubert’s sexuality? About the inquiries she wanted him to make about himself? He wipes at his nose again, feeling Ferdinand’s gaze on him. 

“I wanted to talk to you about it,” Hubert says, cringing at the intensity in his tone. No, he thinks. Ferdinand doesn’t have to know about Dorothea’s theory. As a spymaster, he knows the importance of playing things close to the chest. They didn’t have to know everything about each other. 

“We can talk about it,” Ferdinand says, quieter without his usual self-assurance. “I am not sure how to go about that particular tête-à-tête.”

“Aren’t you the one supposed to be teaching me how to make conversation?” Hubert can’t stop himself from asking. He forces a little smile to creep onto his face.

Ferdinand barks out a short laugh at that, but it’s still laced with an awkward nervousness. Hubert once again grows hyperconscious of Ferdinand’s arm around his, all the more noticeable now that they're standing still. 

“Knowing you, there has to be a story to go with it,” Hubert says, trying to keep his tone as upbeat as he can manage—already difficult for him and only hindered further by the stuffed, nasal sound of his voice. His cheer sounds fake on his tongue, but he pushes on. Somehow, it was easier to hear Ferdinand talk than to think about any of his own various responsibilities. “Why don’t you tell me that story?”

“A story, hm?” Ferdinand ponders, bringing his free hand to his chin. “I suppose there is a story.” 

“There’s always a story with you,” Hubert says, failing his attempt to be funny, but putting in the effort to try anyway. 

Ferdinand laughs, and this time it’s a little less uncomfortable. “You know all my weaknesses, don’t you?” Hubert notices the slip in Ferdinand’s noble speech. A contraction is usually a sign Ferdinand is feeling particularly passionate or upset about something, and Hubert starts to inspect his expression a little closer, but then Ferdinand is moving.

Ferdinand unhooks their arms, so he can look at Hubert head on, face tilted up. With the loss of contact, the sweat building at Hubert’s side is exposed to cooler air. “Listen,” Ferdinand says. “If we are going to talk about this, you are going to have to understand that it is quite a vulnerable topic for me. It is not… something to just brush off casually.”

“I understand,” Hubert says, hoping his sniffling doesn’t discredit his sincerity.

“I know you do, but let me talk more anyway. It is my weakness, isn’t it?” 

Hubert can’t stop the upturn of his lips, ugly as he thinks it is. 

“My sexuality is something I have had some degree of turmoil about in the past. I will divulge to you my tale openly.” Ferdinand smiles back at him, looking down and then up again. “You are my closest confidant, after all, and you surely have earned this knowledge. Honestly, when I think about—Hubert, do you want to go inside?” 

Hubert looks around the garden, wondering if it was too public to discuss such a personal matter. “I wouldn’t say no to it.”

“You are sniffing like a scenthound.” 

Hubert sniffles once more and lets out a wet huff. It’s quite true that he hasn’t taken a clear breath all morning, and with the way his headache pounds, he fears he might faint if he dallies here too long. 

“I was going to have our tea practice outdoors at the gazebo, but if your allergies are that bad we can retreat inside,” Ferdinand says, head tilting in the direction of the castle. 

“I don’t retreat,” Hubert says. “And they’re not that bad.” He sniffles again.

“They are that bad,” Ferdinand says, a wide grin breaking out on his face. 

“Does that mean I’ve learned everything there is to know about strolling?”

“You, Hubert von Vestra,” Ferdinand presses his finger against Hubert’s chest again, but the playful jab feels entirely opposite to yesterday, “have learned absolutely nothing about the subtle art of strolling.”

* * *

His nose is marginally less stuffy inside. They sit in the makeshift classroom, the tea set from the gazebo brought in. Today, Ferdinand has a tray with four finger tarts on it, but there are no tea tins on the table yet. They’ve settled into a sort of game with the tea lessons over the past two weeks. It feels a bit strange to go through their usual routine with such a personal conversation looming on the horizon, but if Ferdinand wants the semblance of normalcy before talking, then Hubert shan’t deny him.

“I have some lemon tarts here for us.”

“Citrus,” Hubert says aloud, mind already racing. He straightens his back where he sits in the chair.

“Yes. Now, what sort of tea would you pair with a citrus tart?”

Games were a happy compromise for them. Ferdinand’s insufferably competitive attitude versus Hubert’s admirable desire to exercise his wits.

Hubert recalls as best he can from Ferdinand’s lessons. “A green tea or a black tea.” He thinks again. “Green or bergamot, actually.”

“Very good. I should remind you,” Ferdinand says, drawing the vowels out in _remind_ excessively long, “these tarts do have dairy in them. Heavy cream.”

Hubert looks down at the tarts. You aren’t supposed to put milk in green tea, so… “Better go with the bergamot, then.”

Ferdinand claps his hands together. “Splendid!” he laughs. “Look at how far you have come! Miraculous. Now,” he removes a tea tin with a flourish from where he held it under the table, “let us see how you have progressed when it comes to preparing the tea.”

Hubert knows better than to start too fast. “Alliance or Empire?” he asks.

“Alliance,” Ferdinand replies, nodding with approval.

Hubert goes through the motions, well-practiced by this point. He grinds the tea leaves in the metal grinder, taps them into the metal strainer while still dry. He places three fingers on the side of the teapot, warming it with the basic heating spell. He waits. Black tea’s water was supposed to be pretty hot, he thinks. After some amount of time, he puts the metal strainer full of tea leaves into the pot. Waits. Was it six minutes? 

“You gave me this tea,” Ferdinand says, somewhere around Hubert’s third _sixteen one thousand_. 

“I did,” Hubert says, glancing at the Lavender Bergamot tin.

“Thank you,” says Ferdinand, and Hubert simply nods, trying to keep count. It was easy to count the two minutes it took a poison to take effect, or the ten-odd seconds it took to strangle someone, or even the six minutes between guard rotations. It’s much harder to focus on keeping time when the only negative consequences are a weak or bitter brew. After he’s counted to be three minutes, though it feels much shorter, he loses track, instead opting to look at Ferdinand, who’s hiding any apprehension he might feel for their upcoming talk masterfully, looking as placid and serene as ever.

He’d remembered that the tea was a gift of Hubert’s.

Lavender Bergamot. Hubert must have given it to him months and months ago. From the rate they were going through tea, Hubert would think it would be entirely done by now. But the tin was still half full. 

Huh. Half full. Hubert usually considers himself a person to think of the glass as half empty. Hubert would not admit it to Ferdinand even if interrogated, but their lessons had quickly become a highlight of Hubert’s day. 

But, this is what friendship was, wasn’t it? Enjoying spending time with a person. It wasn’t that unnatural. The fact that—though it hurt to even think it—he was _enjoying_ these lessons wasn’t strange. The fact that he was starting to put off his other daily tasks wasn’t abnormal. Or maybe it was abnormal and whatever made Ferdinand a pretentious dandy was beginning to infect Hubert’s mind, filling his thoughts with tea instead of torture.

He turns that sentence over again in his mind. No, it was best not to think like that. In this topic of sexuality, what have you, Ferdinand’s and his were separate entities. If, somehow, Dorothea’s theory ended up true, he’d never blame his friends for the realization. As much as he tried to convince his unfortunate victims otherwise, Hubert did have morals. 

He looks at the pot, steeping away, and realizes that he doesn’t know how much time has passed. Well, why not now, then? He takes the strainer out, placing it on a saucer. He stands up to pour Ferdinand’s tea before his own.

Ferdinand adds milk and sugar to his cup, and Hubert stands by, watching him take a sip. When they went inside, he let his hair back down, and it’s slightly frizzy from the cloying humidity of the morning. 

“A tad underbrewed, I would say. You could leave it a minute or two longer.”

Hubert leans back in his chair, where he hadn’t quite noticed himself leaning forward. “I can never get the timing right.”

“You tried very hard that time! You are almost there,” Ferdinand cheers him on.

“How do you know when the right amount of time has gone by? I can’t tell if I’m counting too fast or too slow.” Hubert sniffles again.

“Oh, I do not really count, I guess. I just sort of know.”

“What?”

“A noble has to have an incredibly precise internal clock for purposes exactly like this,” Ferdinand smirks. And maybe it’s Hubert who’s rubbing off on Ferdinand, giving him this mischievous turn. Great, that’s all that Hubert needs. Ferdinand getting mouthy with him.

“Fuck off.” Hubert scoffs, drinking his own tea. Internal clock, his ass. The tea tastes like all tea does, leaf water.

“Ah, I just had an idea!”

“What?” Hubert asks, as he sets his cup down on its saucer and leans forward again, crossing his legs.

“I am not telling. Some surprises are better kept just that—a surprise.” Ferdinand says, a smile overtaking his face. Then, a wink, “I will show you next tea-time.” Hubert wants to push further but Ferdinand speaks first. “Now, about my sexuality. You still want to hear about this?”

Short answer, no. Long answer—well, Hubert would prefer not to waste the time he would need to ascertain the long answer to that particular question.

“I’d think you’d be jumping with joy at me actually asking you to monologue at me,” he answers instead. Better appeal to Ferdinand’s undeniable desire to talk about himself. 

“I am! I just want to lay down some rules, first.” Ferdinand picks up his teacup with two hands but doesn’t drink from it. That wasn’t proper Alliance tea party manners. “Ah, also, you should know I hold no ill will towards Dorothea. Surely, it is on me to not hide secrets from my best friend, not of this magnitude, anyway.” 

“I don’t think of it as keeping secrets.”

“But I do!” Ferdinand objects. “It feels dishonest of me, to some extent. I want you to know everything about me, but you do understand that there are some things that I cannot just let everyone in the world know. There are even some things that I would rather that those especially close to me not know.” 

Hubert nods, trying to think of those things himself. His father’s is the first face to come to mind.

“Therefore, if we are going to have a conversation of this magnitude, at least for me, if I am to reveal this information about myself, other defenses must be lowered. You have been surprisingly accommodating with putting yourself out of your comfort zone when it comes to these lessons, so I hesitate in asking more vulnerability of you, but…” 

“That’s what you’re asking,” Hubert concludes for him. 

“I suppose?” Ferdinand sounds unsure himself.

An idea begins to spark not in Hubert’s head, but his chest, viscerally present in his body. Half anticipation, half trepidation. “What do you want me to do?”

“I do not know. Do you understand what I am getting at? Equal vulnerability, to some extent. All cards on the table.” 

“All cards on the table,” Hubert repeats, nodding. 

“Good,” Ferdinand says, barreling forwards like he has no plan of what he’s going to say next. “You really have opened up to me splendidly in these past days. The amount I know about you know now is exponentially greater than what I did only two short weeks ago. So, do not think of this request as anything more spectacular than it is. I merely feel like this conversation is approaching a line that I do not know what will happen when crossed.”

“So you want us to cross the line together, at least, yes?”

“Well, yes. I know there are some things that you will not budge on,” Ferdinand says, glancing down at Hubert’s gloves, “and I respect that, but with this conversation, our friendship will reach a new degree of vulnerability that I have trekked with very few in this life. I just want to establish that—”

“I said all cards are on the table, didn’t I?” Hubert says, drawing his hand over his face. He had signed himself up to hear Ferdinand talk about himself for however long this took, he didn’t need the whole introduction too.

“You did,” Ferdinand bumbles. “All cards are on the table, I,” Ferdinand says slowly. He picks up his teacup again and takes a sip. He holds the teacup and saucer with both hands again while he talks, and Hubert finds himself almost missing his gesticulations. It’s embarrassing that it takes Hubert until this moment, the lack of limbs waving about, to realize how nervous Ferdinand is. 

“I do not know where I ought to start. There is not a clear beginning. I think I have always liked other men when you get down to it. I remember I was so taken with a male character in an opera when I was a child. Elsio, from _A Tale of Three Maids._ I do not know if you remember, he was the antagonist that—well, that is not very important.” Ferdinand’s shoulders are too square while he talks, teacup and saucer nearly touching his chest with how closely he clutches them. “But I thought he was the most miraculous man in the world. My parents and I must have gone to the opera twice or three times a week when it was on their rotation, I was positively captivated. Of course, I do not think I will ever quite forget the look on my father’s face when I told him I would like to have a husband like Elsio someday.” 

Ferdinand laughs at that, but Hubert feels no pressure at all to join him. He doesn’t have too many memories of Ferdinand’s father, to be honest, and not a single one is positive. He tries to think of his own life, evidence from his childhood that he might be queer. One time he jerked off to the vague concept of knives, which was slightly phallic, he supposes...

“As you know, I was not the most sociable child. I was plenty friendly, but despite that, I never quite had any friends before attending Garreg Mach. I always looked at your and Edelgard’s companionship with—if all cards are to be on the table—most honestly, I do not think that disdain is a powerful enough word. You two had each other and I had no one, and so when envy became tiresome, I took refuge in superiority. I was young and fat and ugly and—ah, I am getting ahead of myself. Right after my father’s rise to power, in that time after the Insurrection, I remember looking up at him surveying the empty throne room. Ionius was off sick somewhere, Edelgard away in Fhirdiad. I didn’t understand anything about coups at that time, only that something very serious had taken place. I was a little afraid even, I think.”

Hubert tries to recall what he experienced in those days. The Insurrection itself had felt unimportant then, everything overshadowed by Edelgard’s absence in his life. He watches Ferdinand put the teacup and saucer down on the table, stir it more with a spoon. 

“But I remember him, looking at the throne and saying aloud, ‘my children will rule millions one day.’ I suppose that was before the death of my younger brother, but even then, I knew that he was talking about me, his child.

“Before the Insurrection, I had been rambunctious. I did not want to do anything that involved sitting inside all day. I wanted to be out, re-enacting the great wars of history!” Ferdinand uses the spoon like a sword, stabbing at the air with it. Then, halfway through the movement, his expression drops, his outstretched arm losing tension. “Finding frogs and snails and putting them in my mom’s skirt. But, ah. It was at that moment I knew that playing commoner would not help me in the long run. It was like I grew up overnight.”

Ferdinand picks the cup up again but does not drink, instead staring glumly at the milky tan tea inside. Hubert can’t remember that unruly Ferdinand at all. But, at that age, Ferdinand must have been nothing more than a child, and any memories of Hubert’s life before his mother and sister’s passing were like distant fog. 

“I made it my life’s goal to become the perfect son,” Ferdinand says, and Hubert hears his voice crack like it did when he was that snotty-nosed child. “Not just the perfect son, but the perfect future leader. The perfect husband. I would become not j-just marriageable, but trusted and likable. There would be no time for childish thoughts about opera characters or male schoolmates. And then my finishing school lessons began. I wish I could say I hated them, I truly wish I could. I wish I was—aware enough to hate them.” Ferdinand steals a look up at Hubert and manages another shaky smile. “But no, Hubert, oh goddess, I relished in them. There was nothing I looked forward to more. Lessons! To make people like me! Think about it.” 

He looks back down at his cup, and the sadness in his laugh itches at a place in Hubert’s chest. “I adored them,” Ferdinand says, another crack in his voice. Hubert awkwardly notices that Ferdinand is on the precipice of crying. “I put all of my energy into them. The idea that I could learn how to make myself likable was what drove me each and every day.

“Of course it never worked out that way. There I was, looking forward to each formal introduction my parents set up with eligible young women, thinking that I was going to make friends with them, fall in love with them. That it would be the end of my unending loneliness! But none of them ever wanted to be anything like friends. Goddess, no, most of them seemed to want nothing more than to go back home. I think I had gone through nearly every bachelorette near my age range in all of the Empire before I realized that I was never going to make any friends that way.”

Ferdinand looks back up at Hubert and then seems to remember his cup of tea is more than a prop and takes a sip. “I am not boring you, am I?” he asks and now he is the one sniffling.

Hubert thinks about it for a moment. Cards on the table. Honest. When Bernadetta had spilled her heart out to him, he felt awkwardly passive. Here, with Ferdinand, passivity seems perfectly acceptable. Something about the conversation seems comfortable, even in its discomfort. Even with Ferdinand about to cry. “Not at all,” Hubert responds. 

“Ah, good. So.” He clears his throat. “When I got to Garreg Mach, I thought things would change. I thought it would finally be the time I made friends. And then it just… did not spark.” He laughs at his sprouting tears, “I am sorry, I am not even that sad about this anymore, really.”

“Only a few months in, and Dorothea hated me for what felt like no reason, the estranged Bartels daughter kept avoiding me, Bernadetta wanted as much to do with me as she did everyone else, Linhardt made an art form out of steering clear of me, and do not get me started on the Goneril girl. Obviously, you and Edelgard were as dismissive of me as ever, for reasons I didn’t then understand. I was friends with Lorenz, and I will always appreciate him for that, but we could only meet up as often as was proper for two people of our station, so tied to our ideals we were—as much as I needed his presence, I believe we often enabled our worst behavior in each other.” He adjusts the angle of his teacup on the saucer to the correct ninety degrees almost mockingly. “So, every day, everyone would gather at the dining hall to eat together, and there I would be, sitting ever so nobly alone, trying to figure out why my lessons had failed.”

Hubert remembers those days. Ferdinand, with his hair still short, going around puffing his chest out. He’d been so proud then, not of his accomplishments, but his name. The Ferdinand of now has built a life of his own to be proud of, but back then, any of his merits were overshadowed by his grandstanding. 

“I was supposed to be electric,” Ferdinand says, eyes still downcast as he rubs at them with one gloved hand. “Captivating. Kindhearted, friendly. And instead, I was just. I was just _alone._ And I should have been used to it by that point, but I had built the Officer’s Academy up as my perfect solution for so long. And then, there was the professor always forcing me to eat with people who only insulted me—not to offend.” He gives Hubert an awkward smile, but the way his face trembles and his eyes are watery and rubbed red overtakes any smile.

“No offense taken,” Hubert says simply, and keeps quiet. 

Ferdinand looks back at his tea and starts playing with his spoon as he looks down. “I still thought during school that I was going to find a wife, though I had begun to think of it as a duty rather than a way to finally make a friend. And of course, then everything came crashing down. The uprising began. Our assets liquidated.” Now, tears slip down the curve of Ferdinand’s cheek. “And my brother was killed, and my mother died of grief…” His voice crumbles, lacking any hint of his normal bravado. “At that point, I knew full well I wasn’t attracted to women. That I preferred male company, as they say.”

That thought lingers in Hubert’s mind. That was his whole intention with this, right? To consider Dorothea’s question of whether he himself “enjoyed male company.” Hubert doesn’t particularly enjoy most company of any kind. But, if he looks at his closest friends, Edelgard, Bernadetta, and Ferdinand, the numbers were in favor of women. But he balks to think of Edelgard or Bernadetta romantically. 

He’s never cared for his title or his family, though. There’s nothing that keeps him from “accepting his sexuality,” if that is his intention in all of this. So, if he preferred men, why would he have not accepted it long ago? 

Ferdinand’s voice cut into Hubert’s introspection, anger lacing his sadness. “Goddess, I knew the way I looked at men in the sauna, I knew the way that—the childhood crushes I had weren’t exactly pure. And I pretend like they’re any better now. The way I’ve thought about people close to me, it’s. I’m not good, Hubert.”

The way that Ferdinand laughs when he cries strikes Hubert as oddly unsettling. Every sob is laced with a chuckle, every sniffle with a smile. It reminds him of the way Ferdinand grows the more pleasant and proper the more he’s actually upset. A comparison complicated as he allows contractions to slip into his speech, so unlike his normal noble bearing. Perhaps this brand of upset was different than what Hubert had seen in the past, though for reasons he cannot parse. Does Ferdinand consider talking about his attraction more upsetting than talking about his time living on the street with the very man that put him there? Hubert does not understand, but he wants to, for Ferdinand’s sake, so he stays quiet and listens.

“For two more years after that, I pretended to like women, just for some sense of normalcy. I thought I needed it at the time. A nobleman loves women, and so acknowledging my attraction to men felt like giving up, on my family name and nobility as a whole. I even slept with a couple women to prove my dedication to myself. And then, somewhere during the war, I just could not keep up the charade anymore. I came to terms with the fact that there was not any point in it. I had lost everything, my noble title meant nothing anymore. Back then, I thought of it like I was giving in to resignation.” Ferdinand uses the pointer fingers of his glove to wipe tears from below his eyes, and swings his hair over one shoulder, taking a deep breath.

“And then, once the professor returned, it was like everything shuffled into place. Suddenly, you, Dorothea, people I thought I could—I could never get to actually _like me_ were talking to me, becoming my friends, and.” He looks down at the table, smiling to himself through the tears on his face. “I met Dustin, and there was this man named Lenard. It was so easy, then. I remember I used to scorn Linhardt for being so willing to throw away his title for his own laziness and something as superficial as his sexuality. It was not until I had my own title yanked away from me that I realized how much I had been denying myself out of misplaced duty.” His fond smile faintly embarrasses Hubert, who—despite what Dorothea might want—is not considering what Ferdinand had been denying himself. But despite the positive upswing of his story, Ferdinand’s smile falters yet again.

“And then the war ended. And, well. Everyone left.” For the first time in his monologue, Ferdinand looks not at the table, his teacup, or Hubert, but instead to the side, toward the curtained window. 

“I know that Bernadetta and Dorothea are still in Enbarr, and Caspar is due to come back from Sreng soon. Of course, you and Edelgard are here. And I suppose I could visit Linhardt in Garreg Mach, or even Petra in Brigid if I was really desperate for it. But everyone is so busy, myself included, and it is hard to see each other as often as I would like. Our afternoon tea was the only regularly scheduled meet up I had. And now you’re getting married off somewhere in the Alliance… And who’s to say the others won’t follow in time, with their own spouses? It was only that those last few years of the war that I felt—well. It sounds silly, and I really am awfully sorry for crying, this is so unwarranted.” He wipes at his face more, and Hubert almost thinks that Ferdinand is gathering himself to stop crying before another sob spurts out. 

“But, I just. For once in my life I was surrounded by people who actually liked me! And not just the person I thought they would like, haphazard amalgamation of stupid lessons that didn’t even mean anything. People actually liked _me._ I had friends. And then the war ended and. It was all over, wasn’t it?” Ferdinand takes a glove off and begins to use it as a handkerchief. For a moment, Hubert balks that he hadn’t offered his own handkerchief first, but then remembers his non-poisoned one is still at Bernadetta’s townhouse. “How selfish, to mourn the end of a war because it means I do not get to see my friends as often. But as much as I wish otherwise, I am not a selfless man.” His smile is wry and self-recriminatory.

“So I do not quite know where I am now. I am rebuilding a country. A country that is much larger than I ever expected to have any jurisdiction over. And all of the people that I have obsessed myself with for the past seven years, just,” he worries with the glove-handkerchief in his hand, “gone.”

“So, that is my story. I could go on more if you would like. I suppose it veered quite far away from my sexuality at the end there.” Ferdinand offers him a small smile, marginally more genuine. “I am sorry, I do not even know why I am crying anymore.”

Hubert looks down at his hands, and back at Ferdinand. This whole conversation, he’s managed to keep his eyes on Ferdinand, but now that Ferdinand is looking back at him, he wants to look away.

Hubert, in short, has no idea what he’s supposed to say.

With Bernadetta, it had been easier. No matter what action he made, he knew Bernadetta would accept any gentleness. He knows his friendship with Bernadetta. Knows there are no directions which his movements might be misconstrued. But with Ferdinand—did he even want comfort? Did he expect it of Hubert? How would he even like getting comforted? Could Hubert really be the right person for it?

He winces, realizing just how long he’s taking to respond. But every word escapes his mind.

No. Think of this practically, Hubert. Every puzzle can be solved with simple logic.

What was it Ferdinand had said his love languages were? He had given him the information of how he liked to be communicated with. 

It was words of affirmation, Hubert remembers. And physical touch.

He looks down at his own hands, white gloves he picked out that morning too bright in the morning sun. Better go with the words of affirmation.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. What is he supposed to say?

“Thank you,” he says, since it seems accurate. Ferdinand looks at him like he’s just sprouted a second head like a monster, so Hubert keeps talking. “Your ability to talk about yourself is—and I say this in the kindest of ways—a marvel.”

Ferdinand uses his glove to dab at his eyes again. His face is already red and smiling when he says: “You do not have to lie to me.”

“I’m not,” Hubert says. It feels strange to talk at all now, after so long just listening, but the monologue had gone on so long he feels awkward not filling the silence. “Your capability to do this, to, um. Talk about yourself, the whole vulnerability thing, it’s really quite admirable.” The compliment feels almost foreign on his tongue.

“Well, that is just like me, is it not? Going on about garbage no one cares about. I do not want to talk about myself nearly as much as I do, Goddess, I am so sorry.” Ferdinand speaks so quickly Hubert feels his own heart speed up. Alright, mission abort. A change of tactics is needed.

He looks around the room. The thing was, when someone was like this, logic didn’t matter to them. He could make an argument. He could remind Ferdinand that he had asked for this in the first place. He could tell Ferdinand that people wanting to talk about themselves was extremely normal. That Ferdinand had even mentioned that in his formal conversation lessons. Asking questions about your conversational partner makes a conversation seem more positive to them, as most people enjoy conversations proportionally to the amount they’ve spoken about themselves. He could tell Ferdinand that everything he felt made sense logically, but he knows Ferdinand wouldn’t listen to it.

He has to speak eventually, though. Hubert just opens his mouth, and lets words come out.

“It’s not garbage no one cares about,” he says. “You were telling your story, weren’t you?”

“Hubert, I don’t want to sound rude here, but. Apart from the war room, when the fuck has a single person ever cared about what I have to say?”

Hubert looks at him. 

When Hubert was fourteen or fifteen, he remembers Edelgard coming to his quarters on the night one of her siblings finally succumbed to the illness that never left their body following Those Who Slithered’s experiments. Her older sister, Aurelia, if Hubert remembers correctly. 

Of course, Edelgard was younger than him, frighteningly so at that age. She had collapsed into his lap, tears streaming down her face. He had never seen her cry quite like that, and he’s never seen her cry like that since. 

The thing about her sadness that was unfamiliar to him was that there was no hatred to it. When, at the sight of it, all Hubert wanted to do was use his scrawny teenage limbs to tear the shapeshifter’s limbs from their bodies, Edelgard simply needed to cry for the night. There was only sadness in her at that moment. Even when Hubert’s own mother and sister were killed, he barely cried over them, instead focusing every emotion into plots to murder his father. 

But then, Edelgard had just cried. She had wailed into his lap, and all he could do was put his hand in her hair and watch.

He looks at Ferdinand.

He had done it before. 

After all, all cards were supposed to be on the table. 

He slips off one of the gloves that he had so carefully chosen no more than two hours ago and sets his bare hand on Ferdinand’s, where it rests clenched and ungloved. 

He regrets it almost immediately, but there is no retreating now. It was just physical touch. Just one of the ways that Ferdinand himself had said worked to comfort him. And anyway, this was like what Ferdinand said about vulnerability before. It had to be a two-way street.

Hubert doesn’t look down at their hands while he talks, but he sees Ferdinand staring at his.

“I care about what you have to say.” He clears his throat, but his voice still comes out nasal from the pollen. “Many people do. You are one of the leaders of this country, Ferdinand. Many, many people care what you have to say.” This sort of pep talk feels out of Hubert’s element, but he proceeds anyway. “Dustin cares what you have to say, right? Your opinion of him means a lot to him. I know that Byleth eavesdrops on every important personal conversation in a 10-kilometer radius of her, that must be because she cares. I know that your presence has made Edelgard’s ruling far better, and fairer. And—I’m not going to list everyone, since I’d have to go through every person in the country. Your voice is extremely important.”

Hubert nods to himself. That came out far better than he expected. 

Ferdinand is still looking at their hands. 

Hubert refuses to look down. Ferdinand _had_ said that physical touch was meaningful for him, hadn’t he?

Maybe he was revolted. Maybe? Almost definitely. Hubert recognizes his misstep. To him, that had been a move of. Vulnerability, intimacy, all those words Ferdinand was babbling about before. But to Ferdinand, it was uncovering something… unsightly. Not for noble eyes.

Hubert detracts his hand, awkwardly, but Ferdinand reaches out to snatch it again. When he looks up, his face is still red, but the tears seem to have lulled. Hubert can’t recognize the expression on his face, which is why Ferdinand’s words surprise him even more. 

“You do not like talking about yourself much, do you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Hubert says, looking down at where Ferdinand’s hand touches his. It feels like more of a visual sensation than a physical one, Ferdinand’s strong, unblemished hand pressed to his mess of curse scars. Hubert has no idea how the conversation has turned so quickly on him. 

“I often wonder, Hubert,” he sniffles again, but now it sounds like a person getting over a bout of tears rather than beginning one. “If you were to tell your story, what would it be?”

“I don’t know,” he responds without hesitation. Whatever Hubert’s story is, he doesn’t want to think about it. 

A silence settles in this room like dust. It’s awkward, again, without either Ferdinand’s tears or his bravado filling the space. He can feel Ferdinand’s eyes on his hands, but now he’s not sure whether he is revolted at the mottled skin or not.

Was Hubert supposed to say something? What was he supposed to say?

Ferdinand’s story changed little about how much he didn’t want to think about his own sexuality.

If anything, all Ferdinand’s story changed was how Hubert looked at Ferdinand. Not in the negative way, no. Rather, he’s always had his suspicions about what motivated Ferdinand in those days as an annoying and unsightly youth. To get all his reasons presented so easily, so simply, Hubert doesn’t know what to do with it. Other than think about his own life, which he refuses to do.

So, he changes the topic of conversation instead. 

“How do you think the lessons will change now that I’m marrying a man?” he asks, voice level and empty. 

“That I have been thinking about,” Ferdinand responds, thankfully. His words lead them back to a realm of conversation Hubert knows how to deal with. “Some things, well. Even in a legal homosexual partnership, some things are expected. But others, I have no idea.” He shrugs, and uses his free hand to drain his teacup, undoubtedly now cold, and set it back down on the table. The movement feels like the end of their previous conversation, but Ferdinand still touches Hubert’s hand across the table. “For instance, there are some very strange Alliance customs between partners. I am sure you have noticed that the Alliance tends to assume a higher level of intimacy between couples than anything we here in the Empire or in the old Kingdom could ever dream of. Their dancing, their public displays of affection. The one that baffled me the most as a child was, well. In the Alliance, married couples share a bed, nightly. As in every single night.”

Hubert nods his head, eager to talk about any new topic. “My spies have told me as much.”

“Is it not strange?” Ferdinand laughs. 

“I remember once it made arranging an assassination particularly difficult. Witnesses.” Hubert can’t quite understand the desire to want to sleep next to someone, to have them snore and kick and drool. But he would do away with sleep entirely if at all possible. In Adrestia, sleeping in the same bed as a partner if not immediately preceding or following intercourse was unheard of. That amount of touching on a constant basis was unfamiliar to most married couples. Each partner having their own private space fostered independence and ensured many political marriages were at least bearable.

“Ah, well. It is not like sleeping in one bed is something I can teach you or something that changes with a male partner. But it is an example of how I do not know what will be expected of you in this marriage. I do not know if that is something you will have to prepare yourself for if it is something I will have to prepare you for.”

Hubert exhales loudly and steals a look down at where their hands touch. 

All cards on the table. Dorothea had told him to use these lessons like a litmus test for his own sexuality. There was no use in convincing himself that that wasn’t his intention. 

“I think it would be best for you to teach me as you see fit, as a man interested in other men. Teach me what you, personally, think an ideal husband to another man would need to know.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “I cannot promise I will fall in love with my future spouse, whether they be a man or a woman. But if you really care so much, I will at least open myself to the possibility of loving them. So that you will at least know that I’m happy in the Alliance.” 

Hubert sees a new mark is rising on his thumb, darker than before. Normally he refuses to look at his own hands, but now his eyes are glued to where his and Ferdinand’s meet as he waits for Ferdinand’s response. And waits. And waits. After a few minutes, he risks looking up at him to see if there’s a problem.

Ferdinand’s eyes are still glassy, and his mouth is parted slightly in surprise. He still stares at their joined hands as well. 

“Ferdinand?”

“Oh! Yes, that. I. I can do that.” Ferdinand says, quickly. “That is very doable. I was going to cancel arrangements with the musicians I scheduled for dance practice tomorrow—should I, uh. Not cancel?”

Hubert would normally bemoan his lessons before making a show of reluctantly giving in—and truly, he does not enjoy dancing and would prefer not to have to try it again. But, he was testing something here. “Don’t cancel.” 

“Ah. That is very good!” Ferdinand looks around the classroom. “We can practice you following, this time around. A little easier, and perhaps it will be useful for a male spouse.”

“Perhaps,” Hubert says, not quite sure if he likes the idea of following. The idea of having to worry less about if he’s moving his body gracefully is attractive, though. “Now, what is on the schedule for the rest of today?”

“Calligraphy and penmanship. A proper noble needs to know how to write letters efficiently but elegantly.” 

“You know very well that three-quarters of my job is writing letters.”

“Yes, and you do it horribly. Your t’s look like r’s! I do not even know how that is possible.” And so, roughly, the lessons continue, as Hubert tries to ignore the specter of newfound intimacy hanging over them like a funeral shroud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: hubert has a lot of feelings whether he wants to or not (he doesn't)
> 
> p.s. i've been having trouble with motivation recently, so comments on this chapter would be greatly appreciated! i'm gonna get back to them in a more timely fashion this week!


	7. Great Tree Moon, Week 3, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hubert thinks about some things he'd rather not think about and some he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, everyone! i apologize for the surprise hiatus. life caught up to me. but now i am back!! ...take this 16k chapter as an apology? feel free to take a few days to read it, i don't know how it got so long!
> 
> i was so, so, so, overjoyed and overwhelmed with all of the comments i got on the last chapter. i am so moved that so many people are enjoying reading this! i absolutely have not forgotten about you, and frequently reread the comments as motivation while writing! 
> 
> as always, i have so much love for [my beta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyBystanders/pseuds/GuiltyBystanders). i've waxed on before about all the work she does, but really, you should see some of the documents when she marks them up. it's really beautiful!
> 
> since it's been so long and i'm a rambler, i have some more notes at the end of the chapter. thank you so much for your patience and support! enjoy!

Over the course of the past two weeks, Peppercorn has warmed up to Hubert. Now when he enters the stable in the early hours of the morning, even without Ferdinand, she perks up, ears flicking. He found himself awakened early by some tight anxiousness in his chest, and his legs brought him to the first event on his schedule. If he got far enough, maybe he could even lie to Ferdinand and say that he’d practiced riding without him. 

Yesterday’s conversation doesn’t loom over his shoulders like he thought it would. The prospect of thinking about his own sexuality is not the daunting dark cloud hanging over him that he expected. Instead, after yesterday’s conversation and today’s cool, early morning dew, his sinuses are clear and his thoughts absent.

The action of brushing Peppercorn has become familiar to him in a way riding her has not, rubbing small circles with the rough brush to kick up dust that settles in her pelt. He’s discovered the right amount of hay to give her as a treat when he wants her to sit still, and how to look at her as not to startle her. 

Cleaning out her stables, something he had avoided ever since the professor had put him on stable duty all those years ago “just to see what he would say,” wasn’t nearly as bad as he remembered. Over the long years of war, he’s become accustomed to far more revolting activities than that of cleaning out a horse’s stable. If anything, it was nice to curl his lip in disgust over something that would help someone, rather than hurt them. Peppercorn is eager to have a cleaner living space, moving out of the way for Hubert to rake old hay and droppings out from underneath her. 

Hubert is quite hesitant to admit that he’s warmed up to Peppercorn. It’s nothing about this particular horse, he thinks. Or about horses in general. She’s far too big, stinks, and could kill him a hundred times over if she were to kick when he cleaned her shoes. 

But there was something nice about the routine. 

Long, long ago, before the Insurrection, before Edelgard’s disappearance, when she was only just a toddler and young child, he’d been tasked with dressing her every morning. That time in both of their lives was long passed; what should have ended smoothly with the awkwardness of puberty was instead abruptly cut short by trauma Hubert could never begin to understand. But those memories of his youth: picking out her clothing early, laying them out for her, learning how to do the buttons backward, studying all the intricacies of female royalty’s dress. 

It has been years since he’d cared for anyone at that level. He still cleans Edelgard’s armor before battle, still checks the sigils around the castle, still carries out his dark deeds in her name, but there is nothing nowhere near this level of basic, daily aid. It’s a strange routine to settle back into, a living thing needing him on such a rudimentary level. But Peppercorn doesn’t complain, doesn’t startle. She is a horse, stars above, she can’t talk. So she just silently appreciates his early-morning care.

When Ferdinand doesn’t arrive at their agreed-upon time, Hubert tries not to worry too much. Their conversation yesterday hadn’t gone badly. Hubert would risk saying it had gone well. There is no reason for Ferdinand to avoid him. Once Peppercorn has been thoroughly fawned over (though Hubert still refuses to talk to her as if she was a human) and Ferdinand still has not made an appearance, he goes about cleaning Ferdinand’s horse and stall as well. 

Chulainn was one of the few lasting holdovers of the von Aegir estate if Hubert remembers correctly. They’d been left a scant few family heirlooms in the upheaval—a few select antiques, books, and jewelry—but only a fraction of the vast wealth they’d hoarded for generations. Of course, they were allowed to keep their gutted mansion and their stables and kennel, though perhaps not enough funds to keep them running for long. So Chulainn was old but had traveled with Ferdinand for years. 

Chulainn was, also, a bit of an asshole. Brushing him was a pain, he always wanted to be in whatever part of the stall Hubert was trying to clean, and he would never stay put when Hubert tried to get him to stay still for two blasted minutes. He doesn’t even dare to try picking his hooves, not risking getting his skull kicked in by some moody animal. 

He taunts Chulainn by feeding Peppercorn a carrot in his direct line of sight when Ferdinand comes racing in in a flurry, twenty minutes late. 

“Oh, goddess, of course, you are already here,” Ferdinand says, one of his boots still unlaced, his jacket unbuttoned. Hubert realizes that he himself is dressed more like an accustomed rider than Ferdinand currently is, despite still being deathly afraid to even mount the horse. Ferdinand’s wearing riding breeches and boots, but a more casual day-jacket not quite suited to their task. Hubert’s grown accustomed to the tight fit of his own pants, the wider range of leg movement the stretchy fabric gives him. The boots are like any others, if a bit higher, but he’d even consider wearing them again to other jobs, they would protect more of his pant legs from getting stained by any stray blood and guts. 

“Slept in again?” Hubert says casually, trying not to pride himself in Peppercorn’s clean state too much while he feeds her a carrot.

“I suppose so,” Ferdinand says. “Just could not fall asleep for the life of me last night. I feel as if I have not slept a wink.” He almost trips over his feet while he tries to lace his boot, leaning against a wooden pole for stability.  
Hubert looks from Peppercorn to Ferdinand. Ah, maybe he should have spent more time this morning thinking about his sexuality rather than thinking about horses. He tries not to focus on the sliver of skin peeking from Ferdinand’s open shirt buttons and undone cravat. He looks at Peppercorn instead, finishing up the carrot, for once finding horse spit the more savory option to focus on.

Ferdinand is quick to snap him out of any foolish thought he has with hated words. “Just because you did all of the preparation does not mean you are going to get out of riding, you know.” 

“I fear it’s gotten much too late to start now,” Hubert says. “I don’t actually need to ride this morning, do I?”

Ferdinand finishes lacing his boot with surprising and frightening speed, then moves on to tie his hair up high on his head in a loose but secure bun. “You absolutely do. You’ve managed to avoid it these past few days, so you are absolutely going to ride today.” He pauses for a moment, and then does up his shirt and neckpiece without a mirror, hands belying a sort of practiced skill that Hubert finds almost worrying. 

Two days ago, Hubert feigned being too sick to ride. The day before that, he’d simply refused to get on Peppercorn. And before that, he’d purposely broke the heel of one of his boots. He frowns, eyeing Peppercorn’s back, notably still unsaddled, wearily. She nuzzles her face against his hand, demanding more treats he doesn’t have, and he tries to ignore how little effort it would take for her to bite all of his fingers off. 

“See?” Ferdinand says, buttoning his jacket, and getting his saddle down from its cubby in the tack room. “She likes you. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Everything to be afraid of. Was it simply not enough to just get the beast to like him? Must he actually ride her also? He sees Ferdinand yawn and latches onto the action instantaneously. “You look exhausted, why don’t we leave it for tomorrow?” 

It’s only after saying it that he realizes how very true it is. Ferdinand does look exhausted. It had taken an hour or two after their conversation yesterday for his eyes to lose that swollen redness from crying, and now they’re slightly sunken, dark bags hanging from his bottom lashes. And Hubert was supposed to be the gaunt one. Had their conversation the previous day taken that much out of him? After they had spoken, he’d seemed jovial, if a little embarrassed.

“And which tomorrow will that be?” Ferdinand says, standing fully. He puts a hand on one hip, inspecting Hubert. “The tomorrow-tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that? Or maybe the one after that? Next month, perhaps?” 

Hubert looks away, recalling the panic blooming in his chest when that high off the ground. Nope. Absolutely not. “Um, Peppercorn isn’t feeling up to it. She’s in a horrible mood today.” Peppercorn nudges against him again and lets out a noise somewhere between a whinny and a heavy breath. “See? She’s miserable.”

Ferdinand regards him a moment, then laughs, and shakes his head. “She adores you. You have probably spoiled her with all of this care and no riding.” Ferdinand comes up to her, touches one side of her face. “Hello, sweetheart. He is spoiling you rotten, is he not?” 

“She’s a horse, Ferdinand. You don’t have to sweet-talk her like a girl at a tavern.” He thinks for a few moments. “Or a man at a tavern, I suppose.” 

The conversation yesterday had felt revolutionary. Important. A step in their friendship. Gloves off, stories out, hearts bared. Their conversation today felt no different. It was the same banter, the same light arguments they both reveled in. Hubert doesn’t know why he expected their badinage to be in some way different—if anything, he should be happy that there was no difference in their comfortably established dynamic—and yet he doesn’t know what to make of it. Did some part of him want a change? A sign, perhaps, that his uncharacteristic vulnerability paid off in the end? Preposterous. Still, the dancing lesson planned for later that day looms over Hubert, like some ghastly specter of his unknown sexuality come to torment him. The only useful thing a horse has ever provided him is the distraction from his thoughts at this moment—it’s impossible to dread the afternoon when he’s already overtaken by dread right now. Peppercorn is _very_ high off the ground.

“Do not listen to him, gorgeous,” Ferdinand says, still talking to Peppercorn. “We are going to get some exercise for you today, I will make absolutely certain of it.” He nods to her, and Hubert gives Chulainn a dirty look, hoping the horse feels neglected while Ferdinand dotes on Peppercorn. Chulainn looks surly, but no more than he always does. 

Ferdinand finishes securing the saddle to Peppercorn, and before Hubert knows it, the mounting block is there, and Ferdinand is looking at him expectantly.

Hubert takes a few deep breaths, approaching the mounting block. He couldn’t close his eyes until he’s safely—ha! As if—atop her, but the idea of mounting her with his eyes open makes him feel ill. 

“Must I?” he asks, hesitantly, pointlessly.

“You must,” Ferdinand says, one hand on his hip while the other stays on Peppercorn’s withers, keeping her in place. 

“She’s such a spectacular specimen,” Hubert says, truthfully, surprised by how much he means it. “A very good horse. The best sort.” He looks at Peppercorn, wavering in his uneven footing on the block. “Too good to ride, even. To ride her would be incredibly demeaning.”

“Please, Hubert,” Ferdinand says, his smile betrayed by his frustrated tone. “Just get on the horse.”

He puts his foot onto the stirrup and tries to will himself onto the horse. He feels his body tense, and he looks beyond her back, thinking about mounting her. All he needs to do is swing his leg over.

The last time he’d rode her—one of the three times he’s actually made it onto her back—had been miserable. The feeling of the horse lurching from one direction to another, the way his mind spun when he saw the ground that far below him. With his failing eyesight, he wondered whether he would see any hazards or traps beneath them, whether he would unknowingly lead himself and Peppercorn to their deaths in his distraction. 

He barely notices his foot shaking on the stirrup until Ferdinand rests a gloved hand on his trembling knee, getting his attention. He looks down at him and immediately despises the look of pity on Ferdinand’s face. 

“You cannot do this,” Ferdinand says, dismally. There’s no judgment in his eyes, but there is carefully concealed disappointment, which is possibly worse.

It doesn’t feel like Hubert’s own voice when he tells him, “I can do it.” 

Ferdinand looks as surprised as Hubert is himself. He doesn’t say anything, though, waiting for Hubert to speak again first.

He doesn’t want to ride the horse. If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t think he’s physically capable of riding the horse. If he could live a life where horses didn’t exist, and there was no expectation that he would ever have to ride a horse, this wouldn’t be an issue. 

But he does live in a world where horses exist. And, the idea that he cannot ride one, and even more, that Ferdinand would give up on the idea that he could be taught, strikes something within Hubert. He stands with one leg awkwardly raised, still lodged in the stirrup, but it’s stopped shaking underneath Ferdinand’s palm. 

“I can ride her,” he states, more sure this time. “I can do it, there’s just…” He stops, trying to gather his thoughts. What? There was just something that felt wrong? There was just a fear he could not get over? There was just something that held him back from even trying? “There’s just something I can’t put my finger on,” he says, eventually, and hears Ferdinand exhale beside him. 

A silence falls between them. This early in the morning, the castle is deathly silent. The cook no longer prepares breakfast, the gardener has been missing since the war. Only the sound of horses stamping their hooves and occasionally snorting fills the air between them.

Ferdinand’s hand stays on his knee, and Hubert can hear him thinking. What he’s thinking, he doesn’t know, but Hubert can sense cogs turning in Ferdinand’s mind. All of the tells that he’s deep in thought are there: his eyes focus into the middle distance, his lips purse. Hubert grows conscious of how his hand rubs Hubert’s knee absently as he thinks, as idly as if he was playing with his own hair. 

“Do you remember the conversation we had yesterday?” Ferdinand asks, finally.

Every second of it, Hubert thinks, but only nods. His leg grows tired from where he has it supported in Peppercorn’s stirrup, but to take it down and break their point of contact feels… ungentlemanly. 

After all these years, he should be better at reading Ferdinand, but even now, sometimes his tone of voice is so guarded Hubert can’t prescribe any one emotion to it. “Do you remember when we talked about how I should teach you as if I was, uh. How I would teach a man interested in other men?” 

The sentence comes out so broken that Hubert needs to parse through it to make sense of it. They had agreed, later in their conversation and before their lesson, that Ferdinand would teach Hubert as if Hubert himself was interested in other men. The way they’d conveyed that was roundabout, vague. Even though all cards had been on the table, Hubert always has a few more up his sleeve, and the issue of his sexuality would remain hidden there as long as he could keep it that way. But they both knew what terms the agreement had been. From this point on out, the lessons would be, somehow, more charged. More emotionally fraught, with a new baseline guiding them. Ferdinand looks up at him with that unreadable expression, but the turn of his lip is undeniably serious.

“I remember,” Hubert says, nodding again uselessly.

Ferdinand lets out another breath, one that Hubert doesn’t know how to decode without blatantly staring at him, and slaps Hubert’s leg. “Alright then, off we go.”

Hubert takes his legs off and is thankful to have both legs back on solid ground while Ferdinand busies himself. He removes the saddle from Peppercorn and leads her back to her stall. Hubert looks at him questioningly, but Ferdinand just calls back, “We will need Chulainn for this teaching method! You just sit tight.” 

Hubert does his best to sit tight, feeling idle as he tamps down a pile of dirt under the toe of his boot. 

“So,” Ferdinand says, getting Hubert’s attention, leading Chulainn to the ring. Hubert feels more centered as he looks back at the two, some of his nerves quelling now that he’s not immediately poised to get on a horse. “What I have planned for you is how, well, to be honest, it is mostly how an adult would teach a child to ride. My mother taught me how to ride like this when I was very small.”

Hubert nods his head, not even objecting to being taught like a child. 

Ferdinand flusters, putting one hand up as if to run it through his hair even though it’s been pulled up, the other on Chulainn’s withers. “And maybe my desire is somewhat childlike, but I have always thought that, to some degree, I would quite like… If I was courting someone, per se, I would very much like to ride with them like this.” 

Hubert nods, still breathing slowly, trying to focus on Ferdinand instead of his own building nervousness. Ferdinand flushes slightly, and it occurs to Hubert that exertion from walking Chulainn from his stall to the ring isn’t the cause of his blush. 

“No saddle,” Hubert observes. 

“No,” Ferdinand says. “So you will have to get up without the stirrup.” He obviously sees the expression Hubert makes at that and laughs. “Do not worry. You are going to be fine. It is quite safe,” he placates.

Safety has nothing to do with it, Hubert thinks, anxiety rising in his chest again. Isn’t bareback supposed to be worse?

Then, Ferdinand drops to one knee beside him, and laces his fingers together, creating a small basket with his hands.

“Just like the stirrups, alright?” 

“No,” Hubert says automatically. “I’m going to break your fingers.” 

“You weigh next to nothing, Hubert. I will be fine.” 

Placing his boot into Ferdinand’s hands feels almost as intimate as touching his bare hand yesterday. There’s give to the grip, and he feels Ferdinand lift up to support him. He tries to ignore the feeling in his chest, but the fact that it’s not a rig of flimsy leather and metal, but rather the steady hands of someone he practically trusts supporting him, propels him to leverage his weight, jump up, and mount the horse. 

Less than a second after he feels Chulainn’s body between his legs, Ferdinand says, “You can close your eyes now,” and Hubert is so grateful that he almost misses the smile in Ferdinand’s voice. He shuts his eyes and is gracious that he never quite sees how far his body is from the ground. “Scoot back a little. There is a lot of horse behind you, fret not. Chulainn’s got you.” 

The rotten attitude of the horse below him doesn’t exactly placate him, but he tries to push himself further back, blindly following Ferdinand’s directions.

“There there, that’s good.” With his eyes closed, all Hubert has to ground himself is the sound of Ferdinand’s voice, the sound of Chulainn’s breathing, and the strange feeling of his feet being so far from the ground. “I am going to mount in front of you. I will not kick you,” Ferdinand says, and then a laugh. “Or, I will try not to.” 

Before Hubert can say anything to object, there’s a flurry of movement, and then another body on the horse in front of him. He can feel Ferdinand’s hair against his chin. 

“Put your hands around my waist,” Ferdinand directs. “I am going to ride around the ring a few times, alright?”

“Alright,” Hubert says, and his voice feels distant when he wraps his arms around Ferdinand’s waist. He needs to put his face to one side of Ferdinand’s head to avoid his bun and chooses the left side. 

And then, underneath them, Chulainn lurches forward. “Just focus on the feeling of him underneath you, alright? Feel what the speed feels like against your skin, in your hair. Keep your eyes closed—use your other senses for it.” 

He doesn’t need to be told he can keep his eyes closed twice. He tries to take in the feelings of the world around him. 

Beneath him, Chulainn is walking briskly, already moving faster than Peppercorn would go on their little walks. There’s the feeling that they’re running around the loop, and he can feel his body tug to one direction at the velocity of the curve. If he focuses, he can feel Chulainn breathe underneath him. He realizes that he needs to lean forward, into Ferdinand, so his legs don’t flop awkwardly at the horse’s sides. 

In front of him, Ferdinand’s body is loose, but his back is straight. His hair smells like the soaps he’d given Hubert for his own haircare. His body is warm, and where Hubert’s hands touch the small protrusion of his belly, he can feel each of his breaths. Hubert tries not to think how long it’s been since someone was this close to him, and grips tighter around Ferdinand’s waist when he picks up the speed even more.

Hubert has always noticed every casual touch he’s experienced. He’s had so few in his lifetime that each one stands out, as either something to suspect or to reluctantly indulge in. He’s never thought it strange how deeply Ferdinand’s touches have impacted him—it only makes sense that he would cherish them, with what little company they had. Now though, after Dorothea’s blasted task for him, he wonders if his enjoyment of these touches, the focus he dials in on each one, isn’t a sign of something more. The horse jolts, dislodging his train of thought, and he clings on tighter, cursing that she put such ideas in his head now of all times. That being said, despite the slight unevenness in the gait, the lurching movement hadn’t been as scary as he had anticipated.

“Not so bad like this, is it?” Ferdinand says, and Hubert can detect the false confidence in his voice. He’s anxious about something.

In honesty, it wasn’t so bad. Hubert can’t imagine opening his eyes, but the feeling of the air going past him, against his brow, on his hair, feels good. When he focuses on their speed, it’s easier to forget about the height. “It’s tolerable,” he says, and even that feels like a milestone.

“Good,” Ferdinand says, softly. And then, “I mean, that is splendid! You can hold onto me tighter if you get scared,” Hubert wants to object to that, but Ferdinand doesn’t give him the time. “I am going to take us around a couple of times at different speeds so that you can get used to the cadence. Just keep taking it in.”

Then, the pace picks up again, and—was this what galloping was? Now, Hubert feels the wind in his hair even more intensely. He notices that Ferdinand has begun to lead forward and follows his lead. His eyes, which were shut tight to the point of discomfort before, have relaxed, and he feels the air in his eyelashes. 

He hates to think that this is working, but it is. The momentum of Chulainn underneath them is lulling, and the stability of Ferdinand’s body in front of him feels secure. 

“So why wouldn’t this work with Peppercorn?” he asks, belatedly realizing that he’s almost shouting into Ferdinand’s ear. 

“She is too small. Or rather, she was not bred for this.” This close, he felt Ferdinand’s words as much as he heard it. His voice resounded like an instrument in his chest, and with this closeness, Hubert could feel the vibration himself. Did Ferdinand feel the same thing when he spoke? “Chulainn is trained for battle, you know? I have gone with him to war in a full suit of heavy armor. The weight of two people, especially someone as light as you, is no trouble for him. I do not think Peppercorn would be happy with it, though.”

“You’ve really had him for that long?” Hubert says, hoping the astonishment in his voice doesn’t come off as insulting. Ferdinand has always struck him as flighty somehow, and the idea of him having the same horse for years and years feels strange. 

“Of course! I remember the day he was born.” Ferdinand’s voice is affectionate, caring, and familiar. Hubert tries to recall when he’s heard him speak like that, to whom it was directed. Had it been to him? “A horse is a lifetime friend. Well, not a whole lifetime. But they live much longer than a dog or cat, most of the time. Peppercorn could be yours for much longer, now.”

If I don't have to leave for the Alliance, Hubert thinks.

“Have you ever had a pet, Hubert?” 

“Never,” Hubert says. His father wouldn’t have approved of it, he thinks. The horrible man would have probably made him kill it, if he ever had gotten one. And even when he grew into himself enough to have hidden it, he never would have had the time for one. And then, it was Garreg Mach, the war.

“Do you want one?” Ferdinand asks. “It is your birthday tomorrow.”

Hubert squints his eyes shut tighter again. “Please don’t get me any pets.”

Ferdinand laughs. “I feel like you could get along with a cat! They are sort of peevish and irritable, yes?”

“Are you saying I’m irritab—”

“And then again, you could also get a dog, of course. I feel like you could respect their loyalty. Wonderful creatures, dogs.”

“I’m not going to get any pets, Ferdinand.”

“Well, not unless _I_ get you one, you mean” Ferdinand scoffs at him. “I hear in the Alliance, some people keep fish in these big glass tanks. Is that strange enough to appeal to you?”

“Now you’re just making things up to insult me,” Hubert says, and tightens his arms around Ferdinand’s waist, his nose pressed against his hair.

Hubert realizes that as they talk, it doesn’t even feel like he’s on the horse anymore. Or, it does, but the lulling feeling of the horse’s body underneath him isn’t worrying. If anything, the sensation of powerful legs, the back and forth, the speed, is comforting somehow. 

He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but there’s something about the feeling—whether that be of Chulainn underneath him or Ferdinand in front of him—that feels good.

* * *

When the sun rises fully that day, dark clouds hang in the sky, and Hubert finds himself in a good mood. The darker days have always been his favorite, and the late spring heat is flushed away by the scent of rain. The morning’s ride left him in a better mood than he knows how to admit, and the day feels full of promise. Promise of what, he’s not sure, but there’s promise there.

Once he’s changed into non-horse scented clothes, he hurries to Edelgard’s room to make his report. It’s a routine meeting, but Hubert would never leave his Emperor waiting if he can help it. Besides, what he’s telling her today is important. For too long he has kept her in the dark about their missing spies. He wanted to spare her any undue worry, confident he could wrap the issue up himself. But with two missing and having found no new clues through the most obvious channels, this is clearly a bigger problem than he anticipated. He has no doubts that were he allowed to keep a full workload—and were he not so distracted with Dorothea’s supplementary instructions banging about his head—he would solve this problem in no time, one way or another. But Edelgard has been thorough in monitoring his hours to make sure he’s not overworking himself, and he is forced to admit he’s not running at full capacity at the moment on a personal level. She will be displeased, no doubt, that he kept it from her this long, but her ire is just something he’ll have to deal with.

He arrives at the meeting and stops short at the room’s occupants. Byleth sits there like usual, supposedly livelier now that she has a real heart that beats—though Hubert still feels like she haunts the castle like a ghost—and Edelgard in her normal chair. But he’s shocked to see Bertram von Goneril sitting next to Edelgard, opposite from Byleth. Hubert takes the open chair at the table and ignores how he’s almost disappointed at the lack of a tea spread.

Bertram is just as small and jarringly pink up close as he’s looked flitting through the castle corridors these past few days. Though they haven’t interacted directly since his arrival, Hubert’s unfortunate suspicion that Bertram might be his intended has only grown since then. He’s caught Bertam watching him intently from across the hall multiple times, and his spies in the castle staff informed him Bertram was asking them questions about Hubert. He’s a skittish thing, apt to flee with a squeak whenever Hubert heads in his direction, but his presence is hard to miss when he’s been hovering around Hubert’s peripheries so often.

“Hey there,” Bertram says, more outgoing than Hubert remembered or would have guessed from his previous behavior. He’s sitting very straight and very still in his chair, so perhaps he’s not as confident as he sounds. “It’s really good to see you again, Minister Vestra.”

Hubert raises an eyebrow at him, willing to call his bluff. Bertram gulps. “I got the impression that you were happier watching me from afar.”

“I, uh, I mean…” He casts his eyes about the table wildly, looking for something to say.

Edelgard saves him from babbling the rest of the day away. “I believe we have a meeting to get to.” She shoots a look at Hubert, who feels like a cat being told off for playing with its prey. 

“Of course,” he says, and waits for Bertram to leave. There’s an awkward silence for a moment as no one moves. Hubert gives Bertram a significant look and he somehow shrinks down in his seat without sitting any less straight.

“I’ve been attending most of the Emperor’s meetings since I’ve got here. Miss Eisner said that I could, so I’ve been trying to learn everything I can while I’m here. Since the Empire’s in charge now, I need to learn about Adrestian politics. I want to work closely with you guys a lot more in the future.” His big, round eyes are nervous and beseeching as he peers up at Hubert. “Do you mind if I stay?”

Hubert looks at him, all pink hair and forced confidence. “I do mind.”

“Wha…” Bertram looks to Byleth and Edelgard. His meekness is grating in a way Bernadetta’s never has been, and Hubert desperately hopes this boy is not to be his fiancé.

“I neither require nor desire your presence, von Goneril. Scamper away.” If only Ferdinand could hear him now, talking to a diplomat like that.

Byleth stands up for Bertram, because of course she does. “He has been learning a lot,” she says, simply.

“I’m not, like, in line to be on the Roundtable or anything, but this stuff is all really interesting, and I feel like, if I do end up being, you know. In a position of leadership in the Alliance, it’s really good for me to know.” Bertram reminds Hubert of a gnat—he’ll fly away if batted at, but he’ll always return no matter how much you swat. 

He looks at Edelgard. “This _stuff_ is also quite private. Your majesty.” 

Edelgard needs no further cue. “Byleth, why don’t you show Bertram around Enbarr? He’s been eager to see Mittlefrank, right?” 

And that was that. Byleth rose silently and waited for Bertram to get up and follow her. Bertram’s excitement is clearly tempered by his hurt feelings. He really better not be Hubert’s future husband, or else things will be very awkward. Hubert is having trouble caring at the moment. Too much on his mind in both murder and marriage. 

After Byleth and Bertram’s exit, the room is thankfully quiet. Edelgard looks at him across the table. “Is it something serious?” she says, quietly but officially.

“I’m not sure.” Hubert finally puts down the collection of reports he’d been holding in his hands, spreading them across the table. “I’ve lost contact with two spies over the course of the past month.”

She sends him a look that clearly conveys she wishes he had told her sooner, but thankfully doesn’t say anything more, giving him time to debrief her. As they go over the details, he’s forced to admit that maybe she has a point. It’s so much easier to talk things over between them, to figure things out with someone else who knows Those Who Slither in the Dark even better than he does. He wanted to protect her from this—he still does—but he can’t deny it’s nice to work with her like it’s the old days, when they were planning their first war, not dealing with the second, secret one.. 

He tries to assure her, over and over, that they’re winning this. That she doesn’t need to worry over it.

“And have your hair go white too?” she responds whenever he tells her not to worry. It’s sure to make them both laugh, if only a little, and that too feels nostalgic. 

Together, they read through his old reports. One of the missing spies’, Frederick, last report is surprisingly straightforward. Just a confirmation of the death of one of the last Slitherer targets, and then, as was typical for him, a half-page of personal thoughts. Telling Hubert how much he was looking forward to having a beer with him when this was all over. His report of a quiet Alliance, no signs of activity from Those Who Slither—though it seems there are more around than he thought if his disappearance means anything—interspersed with quaint musings on how the world would soon be different without them. Frederick isn’t the type of spy Hubert usually recruits, but in some cases, the upbeat attitude can be surprisingly well suited for espionage. Hubert usually enjoyed reading the strange, optimistic ramblings of his reports, which is why he noticed when they’d stopped coming in. He supposes that whatever fate Frederick got, it was that same optimism that led him there. Stupid. Hubert hopes he’s dead, for his sake. 

The other spy, Morgan, was investigating the Goneril, Gloucester, and Ordelia households. It was meant to be a quick investigation, in-and-out with a speedy return whether or not she found the information she was looking for. Hubert was supposed to meet her on that evening a few nights ago for a report and her next assignment. There’s always the chance that she just got caught up in the return trip, but Hubert wouldn’t jump to a positive conclusion so quickly.

The reason why he so often assigns Morgan to quick investigations is how flighty she seems. She’s good at getting information, but Hubert always doubted how much she could be trusted with it. Hubert knows how she’s tempted by gold, the reason why she was so eager to investigate nobles in the first place. He can easily imagine her swayed to the other side by coin. He and Edelgard make note of what information she might have on them, just in case there’s a betrayal in their future. They discuss the benefits of sending an assassin after her since Hubert can’t go himself.

“Do you want to go yourself?” Edelgard asks him. They still sit in relatively the same positions as before but have scooted their chairs closer together to pour over a map together, nearly on the same side of the circular table.

“It would be preferable, but I can’t leave behind my duties here, your Majesty.” The distance between Enbarr and Derdriu on the map stretches out in front of him, and his stomach turns unpleasantly at the reminder that soon he _will_ leave all his duties behind here to go to Derdriu. He reminds himself of Shambala, of the missing spies. The Alliance is the last stronghold of Those Who Slither in the Dark, and it will take time to root them out there just as it did here.

“But it is preferable.” It’s only with Ferdinand’s lessons that Hubert has noticed how good Edelgard’s posture is. Even now, with him the only other person in the room—and barely a person at that, rather an instrument at her disposal—she sits straight as a rod. His back clicks when he straightens his spine.

“What exactly are you insinuating?” 

“You could just go to Derdriu yourself. This marriage is… I hesitate to call it unimportant, but it should not consume your entire life.” She looks at him directly now, and he holds her gaze.

“I thought it was you who told me only but a few weeks ago how marriage would change my entire life.” He almost leans back in his chair, wanting to cross his arms, but thinks better of it, trying to keep his back straight. 

Edelgard frowns at him for a moment, before her expression neutralizes again. “It is going to change your life. But, in that case, you should want your life to be changed. If you do not want this change, it doesn’t need to happen.”

He shakes his head, “You know what I am going to say.”

“You think it is your duty to marry, even if against your will.” 

“My will has nothing to do with i—”

She interrupts, “have you considered that it is equally your duty to go to Derdriu and discover the whereabouts of a possible traitor?” 

He frowns openly, and brings a hand to his face, feeling stubble rising on his chin. He was up for another shave.

“We have an Alliance representative here. It would be easy to call it off. Just tell them you reject the new terms of the marriage, and that we will be selecting another candidate.” Her voice never dips into pity or placation like Ferdinand’s so often does. Her tone is not harsh, only confident and certain. He doesn’t need to spend long to understand what she’s really saying.

“I don’t reject the new terms of the marriage. Is that what this is all about?” 

“That, _among other things_ , is what any of this is about! I’d command you to put more thought into this if I thought that would change anything.” But it won’t, they both hear, unsaid.

“I am putting thought into this,” he says. 

“Obviously not enough. You agreed, both originally and to the new terms, without taking so much as a second to think things over. If you won’t consider what this means to you as my friend, then at least consider what it means to you as my subject. You’re my spymaster, Hubert. You could be off in Derdriu, tracking down a traitor and gutting her in some dark alley, or poisoning her, or—doing whatever you do. But for some reason, you think being stuck here, putting up with Ferdinand’s idiotic lessons is actually a productive use of your time—”

“They’re not idiotic!” Hubert says, shocked to hear those words his own voice. Interrupting the Emperor was not uncommon in their conversation. They interrupted each other back and forth. Usually, neither of them think anything of it, continuing their conversation towards a better Fodlan. Now, the words just hand in the air, too forced. He takes a breath and pulls at his collar. “Excuse me, Your Majesty. I just mean… His lessons are not as stupid as I thought they were previously. They are important to him and potentially to others I may interact with down the line. I find that they may be extremely beneficial to my future marriage, and furthermore…” he pauses, gathering his thoughts. Did he even believe what he was about to say? “Furthermore, I think that they are beneficial to both my personal development.”

“Is that so?”

Hubert’s hands feel awkward lying on the table with no teacup between them. No wonder why Ferdinand always played with his hair. He picks his words carefully like any syllable could be a booby-trap. “I have been using the lessons to reflect, as I was ordered to at the beginning of the month.”

“What are you reflecting on?” she asks him, slowly, patiently.

“Dorothea thinks that I am gay.” The words come from his lips easily, perhaps easier than expected. 

He’s good at keeping secrets from Edelgard. There are some things, about him, about his job, that she will never be privy to. But that didn’t mean that hiding things from her ever felt good. It’s not so much relief as it is comfort that he feels from his admittance. 

Edelgard is silent and he realizes, belatedly, that she’s waiting for him to say more. 

“And perhaps I am,” he says, slowly, feeling each word on his tongue. “I’m not sure.”

“You never were interested in romance or sex, were you?”

“The same could be said about you, your Majesty,” Hubert retorts.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. I am not determined to be loveless forever, Hubert. Only until the end of this war.” She looks down at her hands, spinning the purple ring Byleth had given her around her finger. 

That’s how it always was for Edelgard. Only until the end of the war. Hubert responds to her aloud, “Romance isn’t supposed to be a wartime story.” But his head thinks otherwise. At the end of the war, would things really be so different from now? The concept of the war ending at all feels foreign to him. 

“Precisely. Soon, the fight for freedom over our own destinies will be won, and we will be able to rest. Then, our lives can begin with everyone as equals, regardless of birth status or crests.” She pulls her heavy side ponytail over her shoulder and Hubert can see pale sparkles of perspiration on her neck from its previous resting place.

Their lives would begin with the end of the war. The thought seems laughable to him. His life _was_ the war. What was there after this? The possibility that he would live to see the end of it was always doubtful in Hubert’s mind. But now, even more frightening is the thought of what he’s supposed to do with the rest of his life after the war. “What will you do?” 

“Continue the reforms. Turn down the crown, create a new title for the ruler of Fodlan. Something chosen by the people, run through merit, not blood.” Her fingers brush over the map in front of them. “I will want to find a predecessor as soon as possible. Not rashly, but quickly. I want to give whoever will lead this new Fodlan into the future ample experience and example before I retire.”

“But you will retire,” he says, stupidly. Of course, she would retire. That’s what people did, outside of monarchies. Without nobility, people could retire, instead of working straight to their deathbeds.

“And get a cottage by the ocean, I think.” She sounds so serene. They talked over every aspect of this war, and sometimes the world beyond the annihilation of Those Who Slithered in the Dark, but rarely about their own lives, their own futures. “Where will you go?” 

Hubert tries to imagine himself anywhere but here. What life was there outside of this empty castle, stalking the grounds like a ghost (until Ferdinand’s smile brings him a brief respite)? What else was he supposed to do? 

He’s known the castle all his life, whether he wanted to be here or not. For a long time, it felt like all he knew. He knows what the castle is like as a dream, the brief visits there with his mother, father, and sister where it felt like the grandest place on earth. He knows the castle as a battleground, what it was like to move into after his mother and sister’s passing, what it was like to know his father in the next room was the cause of their deaths. He knows the castle as a prison, where no matter how many times he tried to pick the locks, his father had shut him into that room, with no news of Edelgard’s disappearance for months and months on end.

Then, he knew Garreg Mach, for all that it was. Looking back on it with an adult’s eyes, perhaps he should have enjoyed more of the time he had spent there. But, he was a man of duty. There had been preparations to be made, plans to be set up. After all, a member of House Vestra would never be the type to have something as puerile as a childhood. His mission at Garreg Mach was not an educational one.

Life outside of either of those two places, outside of Garreg Mach, outside of Enbarr, doesn’t feel realistic to him. But he’s no teacher and he never wants to live in the castle without Edelgard again. What was he supposed to do? Become a mercenary? Some sort of assassin-for-hire? 

And then, the answer presents itself to him with a wave of heavy anxiety. He wouldn’t be in the Empire at all, probably. “I’m getting married, I suppose. I’ll be in the Alliance.”

“You don’t have to,” she says, simply.

He looks down at the table, the map wide open to him. As a child, he was trained to see Enbarr first when he looked at a map. How long was the trip from Enbarr to Derdriu? How many days would it take to get to Brigid from here? He knew other places existed, he was no fool, but there Enbarr was, the center of his universe for so long. 

“You could stay here,” she says when Hubert fails to speak, into the silence and the rustle of the curtains blowing in the hot summer wind. “You don’t need to get married.”

He purses his lips but again doesn’t speak. 

“You could stay here, if you wanted, I’m saying. The future of Fodlan could use you. I don’t know what this new country will be without you and Ferdinand leading it.”

“The same it would be without you leading it, your Majesty. This predecessor you speak of—how am I supposed to know they will make the right choices? How am I supposed to know they will do what our dre—your dreams are? Will they really have the best for Fodlan in mind?” He speaks too quickly, too passionately. With Edelgard, he stopped presenting a false version of himself long ago. She knew him long before he ever created his personality, so when he speaks to her, there’s no malicious laughter, no dark hum. Without his persona, though, he just sounds… small. 

“That is exactly why it would be good to have you and Ferdinand here, to keep an eye on them. Keep things in check. As much as we—yes, we—dream of it, entire power upheavals aren’t done overnight.” She sighs. “There’s no saying this predecessor will be as good as I hope. But I believe there’s a natural goodness in all people, and I hope with enough eyes on them, they will see that in others too. You and Ferdinand could only make this power structure stronger, at least during our lifetimes. Your work in the Alliance will last you only a few years at most. After that, you’ll just be married. While working remotely from Enbarr might slightly extend the time until our victory, your work in the Kingdom proves it is possible.” She shifts her hair again, putting it back to one side. “Don’t you want to stay here? Not get married to some random noble from the Alliance and spend the rest of your life hearing half-accounts of Roundtable meetings?” 

“After Those Who Slither have been smothered from the face of this world, I don’t see those meetings being particularly interesting,” he says. “I also don’t see vassalage with the Alliance going on much longer.”

“Neither do I.” Edelgard doesn’t touch him, but her voice has grown slightly softer over the course of their conversation. Through their words, it feels like they are holding hands, like he did with Ferdinand yesterday. “Why not stay in Enbarr longer? Maybe give yourself some more time to—how did you put it?— _reflect_ on your sexuality with Ferdinand. I think you could make a very good life like that.”

Hubert looks up at her. He doesn’t know when she’d stopped looking at the map and started looking at him. He tries to ensure no expression passes his face because he doesn’t know what gratitude looks like on his features. “I will consider it.”

“Good,” she nods at him, and then, just like that, the warmth of intimacy leaves and they return to normal. “Now, I am starving. Do you want to see what the chef came up with for lunch?” she says, standing, and he scrambles to stand up before her. Whatever he thought of manners, sitting before a standing emperor was unheard of. 

“I hope it’s fish,” he says. “I can’t stand all the vegetables recently. What’s the point of living so close to the ocean if all we eat are crops?”

She laughs out loud at him, and it brings a smile to his face as well. “You never grow up, do you?” Another chuckle while she pushes her chair in and he does the same with his. “Ah, speaking of growing up, tomorrow is your birthday.”

“So it is,” he replies, though he’s spent the better part of the day denying it to himself.

“Do you want anything this year? In respect to gifts, parties, anything? It’s not too late to throw something together.” 

He holds the door open for her to exit the room. “You know my answer to that.”

“Just another day, is it?” she asks.

“Of course.” He nods, setting a course down the hallway. Birthdays have never been an event of note to him. If anything, he’d rather not think about his own aging, each year a lost opportunity to accomplish his goals. 

Edelgard sighs at him, but soon a wicked smile crosses her face, more fitting for his countenance than hers. “Are those brussel sprouts I smell?” she goads him on, picking up her pace. “It must be your lucky day.”

“Suddenly, the idea of moving to the Alliance is much more attractive.”

* * *

Hubert is faced with a few hours between lunch and his lesson with Ferdinand. Dancing. 

He spends the time in his quarters because, seemingly for the first time in years, he doesn’t have anything else to do. 

He checked all the magical wards and sigils around the castle yesterday. With a plan for the missing spies ironed out, he’s sent off his instructions to the relevant underlings and can only wait to hear back. With his lighter workload, the meetings he would usually be attending about the state of Fodlan are absent from his schedule, and he discovers he misses them less than he thought he would. Even more surprising, he’s missed _from_ those meetings less than he thought he would be, couriers only occasionally bringing him briefs with notes asking for his opinion. 

No letters, no meetings, no lessons. 

There are a few books on his shelf he could read. To be honest with himself, there are far too many books on his shelf he should read. While he tries to keep his possessions humble and his room bare, he can’t seem to help himself from amassing books he never has time to read, and yet he is even more rarely willing to part with any. There must be at least forty books he hasn’t even begun, and yet, now that he does have the time, the prospect of sitting down and reading one isn’t as alluring as he always hoped when buying them. The weather is nice, he could go read in the courtyard, or even in a cafe in the city. 

Or, he could stay here and face down his own thoughts for the next few hours. From where he lays on the bed, the distance to go to his bookshelf is too far, and the distance to the gardens or the city unsurmountable. He curls in his bed instead, laying on his side, only having bothered to remove his boots, jacket, and gloves. The sun isn’t glaring through his window, instead, a gray light glowing from outside. 

If he stayed in Enbarr forever, there would be lots of days he could go to a cafe in the city and read. He isn’t sure about staying in the castle all his life, but he could always make like Bernadetta: a townhouse, or an apartment even. Something humble, where he could commute to the castle or wherever the new headquarters of the Empire would be every day. To be surrounded by the city and the people in it that he served every day. If he lived there, alone, of course, he’d have to cook for himself every day. That would certainly complicate his plans... Or he could make like Dorothea and go out every night. That sounded needlessly expensive and public. He supposes he could hire someone to cook for him as long as he made sure to properly compensate them, but it rubs him the wrong way both to employ a servant, even a well-paid one, and for someone unknown to have full access to his house.

On that first introductory day of lessons, Ferdinand had said that he would instruct him on how to prepare simple dishes. Something about how being able to produce a dish to bring to parties or serve yourself was a vital part of being a proper noble host and entertaining guests, though Hubert always got the impression most nobles simply had their cooks do it for them. He wouldn’t blame Ferdinand for forgetting that section of the lessons, as Hubert has proved to be a slow student in even the most simple ones. 

Does Ferdinand know how to cook? He must if he was going to teach Hubert how. 

If Ferdinand also stayed in the city, maybe he could help him cook. Perhaps, even, they could cook together. Or learn to. The concept of living alone was already a bourgeoisie privilege that the citizens of a new Fodlan would have to change in the coming years. City-dwelling bachelors didn’t need to live alone. Yes, he and Ferdinand could share a little apartment, maybe. That would make going to and from meetings easier. And, if there was a threat to either of their lives, the other would be there to defend them. A life cohabiting with Ferdinand wouldn’t be a bad one, actually. Maybe, even, going out to read at a cafe would be easier if Ferdinand was reading and drinking tea across from him. 

He turns over in his bed. Despite the day still being notably springtime, he can feel goose pimples rise on what little skin is exposed to the air. 

It isn’t that he’s gay. Or in love with Ferdinand or anything like that. 

He would also find joy in moving in with Bernadetta. Or Dorothea, for that matter. Of course, the ideal would be following Edelgard to her grave, but she so much as said he wouldn’t be invited to her life after ruling. But, Ferdinand would be the next person he could see himself living with. 

He shuts his eyes. 

Maybe he needs other male friends. Caspar had been away for months now on the border of Fodlan and Sreng. Linhardt had made a home in Garreg Mach since the end of the war but, for someone who was conscious so rarely around Hubert, his absence was sorely felt. Though as much as he does miss them, not that he would ever admit it, he can’t imagine happily living with Caspar or Linhardt. Neither can he imagine himself kissing them. 

In that conversation with Dorothea, he thought about kissing as a gauge. While romance and marriage seem to be practices not made for him, kissing felt different. He’d like to kiss someone, at least once. Could that someone really be—

He gets out of bed, because absolutely not. He was a grown man, tomorrow he would be twenty-nine whole years old. He was not a child who fantasized about kissing someone in bed at two P.M. 

So, what, there was nothing to keep himself busy with? Impossible. He’s always been a man skilled at keeping himself occupied. So what if he won't even try reading as he knows his mind will wander? There was always something practice, something new to learn. In a few hours, he’d be dancing with Ferdinand, and with musicians accompanying as well. A von Vestra is always prepared. He’d taken good notes during their lessons. 

He sits at his desk, laying his dancing notes over the correspondences he stayed up all night a few days ago to answer. 

In but a few hours, he will need to put his gloves back on with the clear knowledge that he’ll remove them again for a tune or ten. After all, one was supposed to wear gloves at all times except for eating, drinking, and dancing. And, today, they would dance. 

Rather than apprehension, the prospect of transitioning the theoretical dancing lessons to technical practice fills Hubert with a sort of nervous excitement he hasn’t felt since the war, akin to the few hours before a battle. 

A chance to prove himself. It’s the same delight he gets from Ferdinand’s tea quizzes; a sign of actual, tangible progress in something. It wasn’t just an excuse to spend time with Ferdinand. 

Something Hubert realized only days after leaving the Officer’s Academy and turning all of Fodlan on its head was that the era in his life of schooling and learning had abruptly ended. Whether true or not, with the professor's incessant lessons during the war, he had felt it then. He’d brought his own youth to an end suddenly without thinking of it first. But he was Hubert von Vestra. His youth had ended with Edelgard’s, upon seeing her ghostly hair at her return. He wasn’t made for school life but for creeping in the shadows and carrying out the dark deeds of the Empire with precision and no mercy. 

Hubert was accustomed to waiting. As a child, though against his will, he had to wait for Edelgard’s return, hatred for his father boiling in his blood and building the magical energy that would soon surge from his fingers. As a youth, he and Edelgard waited for the perfect year to go to the Officer’s Academy, the perfect year to try and kill off the next two leaders of the Kingdom and the Alliance. They’d waited throughout the year to kill them again, tolerated this new strange professor with dead eyes and no expression. Even now, as an adult, the day before his twenty-ninth birthday, the war he had begun to plan over a decade ago was still raging as he waited for his agents to report.

Hubert was a person who had long learned that he may wait so long he won’t live to see the change he will bring to Fodlan. 

So these instances of short, easily won accomplishments were, at least in his mind, all he had. He held onto each of them tightly, each grade higher he had progressed in Reason, each new knife trick he learned, each face-stealer he took out. With these lessons, each time he correctly brewed a pot of tea. Small goals.

But, these etiquette lessons, just like the professor's lessons long ago, were only a means to an end, he reminds himself. To think of them as anything more could be dangerous. Etiquette lessons (with Ferdinand) to prepare for an arranged marriage with an Alliance elite, to learn more about how deeply Those Who Slither in the Dark had delved their fingers into the Roundtable. To advance Edelgard’s dreams, to advance the Empire, to improve the quality of life all over Fodlan for centuries to come. 

Not to enjoy himself (or the look on Ferdinand’s face) for getting a dance step right.

* * *

Getting the steps right is harder than he imagined.

They meet in the castle’s ballroom, and there’s more dust here than in the unused throne room. In a few places, plants crack through the flooring, sprouting bits of green amongst the stone and wood. Ferdinand sneezes exactly six times before pulling back the long heavy curtains of the ballroom, sunlight streaming into the room. In the light, little particles of dust dance around the ballroom, using the space for its designed purpose in the absence of humans. 

“I really do apologize about this,” Ferdinand keeps saying to the musicians who wipe down forgotten chairs in the small orchestra space of the ballroom. The musicians all only laugh, happy for a spare few gold during this tenuous era of Fodlan’s reconstruction. It’s a _classic quartet_ Ferdinand tells him, two violinists, a violist, and one cellist. 

With every note as the musicians tune, Hubert feels a bit more of his confidence melt away. 

Even after studying them for hours earlier, Ferdinand’s lessons hadn’t been that fantastic, looking back on it. One could only say _1-2-3_ so many times. Hubert’s back already hurts from trying to sit properly while he studied, so trying to maintain holding his head up high makes his shoulders screech. 

“How do you feel?” Ferdinand says to him where they stand off to the side of the wooden dance floor. 

Ferdinand, obviously, had changed since their ride that morning. His jacket is a pale cream, rather than his typical red. Somehow it clashes with his hair even more, which strikes Hubert as endearing before he ignores the thought. He must have bathed and maybe napped, his tired eyes bright again, hair down and each waving curl defined.

Hubert would feel underdressed, but when in black, one is never underdressed. 

“Unconcerned,” he says, more confident in his ability to lie than to dance. “I think I will prove a better dancer than we both expected.”

“Ah? I am happy to hear that, then.” So maybe Hubert had come off overconfident. He nods awkwardly, and Ferdinand looks about the ballroom again, tucking his hair behind his ear. “I think it will be easier this time, anyway. I always found following easier than leading. Just remember to think of the steps not as forward and back, but on the diagonal we dance on, remember? If you think too much about horizontal movement, you might have trouble trying to lead later on.”

Hubert nods and takes another glance at the notes that he’s crammed into the pocket of his jacket he usually keeps his favorite dagger hidden in. Then, he rethinks what Ferdinand has just said. “You have practice in following?”

Ferdinand looks down, blushing coyly for a moment, before looking back at Hubert and shrugging. “Not as many times as I would like. I love dancing with people.” He plays with a lock of hair again, a tell he should really get control over, twisting it around his finger. “I know it sounds boastful of me, but I still think dancing is one of the best activities to do with a romantic partner. So, I have done some following in my time.” 

Hubert swallows, thinking about the lessons, thinking about his fantasy apartment in Enbarr, thinking about how Ferdinand is stepping onto the dancefloor and the musicians have their bows at the ready. He tries to think that the beating of his heart is from nervousness. 

Hubert steps onto the dancefloor, positioning his arms upright. No. He had to lose himself in the steps, not the emotion behind them. The problem wasn’t that he was thinking too hard, it was that he was thinking too hard about the wrong things. He pushes away the thoughts of how Ferdinand wants to teach him how he’d teach a potential lover, and instead, tries to focus on the swelling _1-2-3_ of the musicians as they begin to play. 

It’s not until Ferdinand’s hand fits into his own that he realizes they both neglected to take off their gloves. 

It’s a small thing. They’d never explicitly said that they would go gloveless just because of yesterday’s activities. Ferdinand might still think he’s uncomfortable with it, especially with other people around. Maybe, it would be better to ignore that yesterday had happened at all, Hubert thinks, while he puts his hand on Ferdinand’s shoulder. He does not even let Ferdinand’s hand taking position on the small of his back affect him.

The hours he spent transcribing the steps backward pay off. Back, side, together, back, side together. At first, Ferdinand counts the steps out for him but trails off once he sees Hubert step in time without a hiccup. 

“You are much better at this than I expected,” Ferdinand says, and Hubert is looking down at his own feet too much to read his tone.

 _Only as good at my teacher,_ or _only with such a good partner,_ or _I practiced alone in my room for hours just to impress you,_ all pop up in Hubert’s head. He pushes them all down, and instead says, “I’m trying to focus.”

They dance for an hour like that. Eventually, Ferdinand introduces turning into their steps, which Hubert picks up on, already having drawn out diagrams in his room earlier. Hubert is, for lack of a better word, impeccable. He never stops counting _1-2-3_ in his head. Even towards the end of their practice, he’s able to start looking in front of him rather than at his feet. 

In their first dancing lesson, Ferdinand had said that the leader was to look at the follower the entire time they danced. That it was a symbol of politeness. He can feel Ferdinand’s eyes on him through most of it, though, as the minutes wax on, more of his glances are stolen elsewhere. Hubert’s gaze falls to the right, above Ferdinand’s shoulder, where he had said those weeks ago it was polite for the follower to look. Hubert is glad—it’s easier to concentrate on his steps without watching Ferdinand’s face, trying to figure out what he’s thinking from any little changes to his expression.

The hour is up. No feet are stepped on. 

While Ferdinand bids the musicians farewell and pays them, Hubert seeks out a derelict chair in the room and wipes the dust off it. Sitting, he looks back over his notes and begins to scribble down new ones. It had been difficult for Ferdinand to spin him, probably on account of his height, but he still was able to get the foot placements right. 

“That was quite miraculous, Hubert,” Ferdinand says aloud, and Hubert looks up at where he stands. He stands with his hands folded behind him, somewhat awkwardly. “I had no idea that you had it in you.”

Hubert smiles, boastful. He had been expecting his studying to work, but not nearly this well. Even something as physical as dancing could be distilled to easily learned and memorized written instructions. “How did I do?” 

“Why, Hubert.” The expression on Ferdinand’s face is unforthcoming. Hubert didn’t know someone could look frustrated and impressed at the same time but, as always, Ferdinand surprises him. “Well, you were technically perfect. Or, as much as one can expect from a beginner. I am really quite astounded.” 

Hubert does his best not to punch his fist into the air and instead lets the beginnings of a smug grin grace his face. It was that same feeling of success from the tea game, or the pride after he’d cooked a meal with the professor all those years ago. Something he shouldn’t excel at, but he did. Against all odds, Hubert was succeeding. 

“I do have to ask, though. Are you feeling quite alright?” When Ferdinand bends over to look Hubert in the face better, still standing as Hubert sits, his hair falls over one shoulder, draping across cream-colored fabric. 

“What do you mean?” He turns his attention back down to his notes, not allowing himself to get distracted any longer. How many steps had he taken when he tried to spin? 

“It is only… I got the impression that your mood might be low.” Ferdinand rocks back onto his heels and then back on his toes, balance carefully teetering. 

“What made you think that?” Hubert looks up from his notes to address him, his voice coming out snippier than he intends. 

“Nothing, I just. I do not know,” Ferdinand says listlessly, then looks about the room and locates another chair. He talks while he dusts it off and sets it across from Hubert’s. “Perhaps it is only that you surpassed my expectations so much.” 

Was his hidden talent in dancing really so surprising?

Well. Yes. It probably was.

He considers revealing his hours of practice to Ferdinand. Would that seem obsessive? He was still attempting to seem uninterested in the lessons as a whole. But still, he had practiced and it had paid off. That was something to be proud of, yes? And he couldn’t have Ferdinand thinking it was all his teaching. “I did practice,” he finally settles on. Short, to the point, not revealing too much. 

“That is… very good.” Ferdinand leans forward in his seat, and Hubert can read in his tone that he wants something from him.

Hubert looks around the room and his eyes draw him back down to what he can make sense of. Notes. Instructions, written text. “Will you want to teach me more steps with the chalkboard? That worked positively for me. I think I am ready for more spins and perhaps some more complicated choreography.”

“Ah, slow down a moment.” Ferdinand waves his hand in front of him. “I think that there are other things to focus on before lifts and spins.”

Hubert looks from his notes to Ferdinand. Ah. So this would be a conversation, would it? The thought excites Hubert, which is exactly why he shuts it down. “This is all preparation for my wedding dance, right?”

“Well, yes, but.”

“But what?”

“Let me talk!” Ferdinand exclaims and makes a movement with his hands as if he was to slap Hubert’s shoulder if only he was a few feet closer. “I just get the feeling that the reasoning behind your dancing is all wrong.”

Hubert feels his forehead furrow, frustration evident. He had done everything right. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, that.” Ferdinand coughs into a closed fist. “Praytell, what was going through your head while you were dancing?”

“I was counting,” Hubert answers factually. 

“That’s good.” Ferdinand’s tone is less than positive. What could he have possibly done wrong this time? “Anything else?” Ferdinand asks, awkwarder this time. 

Hubert takes a moment to think, and then says, with a healthy drip of sarcasm to his voice, “how good I was doing?” 

Ferdinand cringes, closes his eyes, and sighs. He brings a hand out, and rests it on Hubert’s knee. He talks casually, as if they weren’t touching, as if Hubert were able to focus his attention anywhere but the point of contact. “I think it would behoove you to give more thought to why you want to dance.”

They had just been dancing. They’d just been in each other’s arms, faces barely a few inches from touching. Hubert had been able to feel Ferdinand’s body heat and the movement of his biceps underneath Hubert’s hand. All of that should have felt far more intimate than this talk, sitting a foot away from each other, but the placement of his hand burns against Hubert’s knobby knee. “It is important for the marriage,” he answers as if it’s obvious. 

The marriage. To Ferdinand, he was still fully involved in getting wed. To Ferdinand, that was still the entire reason behind these lessons, behind everything Hubert does. He didn’t know about Hubert’s growing fantasies of townhouses or cooking, didn’t know about Edelgard’s support in giving up the marriage altogether. 

“You know full well that you may not need to dance at all in a Sabbatini partnership.” Ferdinand looks him in the eye. With how far forward he is leaning and the existing difference in their stature, he still looks up at Hubert. “What is it that motivates you to dance at all?”

To be fair, Hubert takes a moment or two to think. At first, he hadn’t wanted to dance at all, and Ferdinand knew that. It was awkward, his body wasn’t built for it. There are a few small parts of him that want to dance now merely because it makes Ferdinand happy. But, more prominent than that: “I want to do well,” he says. “I am motivated by wanting to do well.” 

There’s a moment where neither of them says anything. 

“Is that not good enough?” Hubert huffs after a long beat.

“It is!” Ferdinand objects. Then frowns. “Or maybe it is not. I was only hoping that there would be something magical about it!”

“I could cast Dark Spikes T to the floor below us, if that helps.”

Ferdinand frowns, and removes his hand from Hubert’s knee. “It does not.” He gets up, coming around behind the chair he was sitting on to rest his hands on the back of it. “I thought that you might enjoy dancing. That it could help you get out of your own head.”

Get _out_ of his own head? How was something that elaborate with so many numbers and memorization supposed to get him out of his own head? “I do enjoy it. It’s like a math problem. I want to be able to do it well.” 

Ferdinand slumps his shoulders in a sort of defeated frustration where he grips the back of the chair. “That is all wrong. Goddess, Hubert, none of that is how it is supposed to be.” Then, he says, under his breath, forgetting that Hubert’s a spy and is adept at picking up quiet words, “None of this is how it was supposed to go.”

“How is it supposed to be?” Hubert says, letting frustration bleed into his voice as well.

“Not like this!” 

And then they’re back where they began. Frustration, anger. A fundamental problem in communication. Maybe it’s for the best. The more issues in understanding each other’s ways of life, the more problems in communicating their priorities and ideals, the easier it will be to forge on with this marriage. Easier to forget townhouses and cooking, easier to forget all of this. 

Not yet, though. Hubert would attempt to meet him in the middle for a little longer. Who could it hurt?

“What motivates you to dance? What goes through your head when you do it?” 

Ferdinand looks at him for a few moments. His voice comes out frustrated again when he talks at first and then begins to bleed into calmness. “Oh, Hubert. How I wish I could show you. Dancing is just. It is one of the best things you could do with another person.” He smiles a little, almost bashful. 

“There is nothing in the world like it. With the right partner, the feeling of being in someone’s arms. It feels like you are flying, like there’s no floor or ceiling, or even room around you.” The energy of his words pushes away him from the chair, onto the dancefloor, where he paces, attention turned to the decrepit ballroom instead of Hubert. 

“It is amazing. It is like there is no one else there, just you and your partner, and the music. And, mercy, being able to look at a partner’s face while you dance. Their smiles, microexpressions, everything. Just looking into someone’s eyes, being in this little world with them, and it is only just the two of us, and.” Ferdinand laughs, turning back to Hubert. “Is this making any sense to you?”

Hubert realizes he’s begun to lean forward in his seat, captivated by Ferdinand. He leans back, slouching, crosses one leg over the other, and then crosses his arms for good measure. Cool and collected, he thinks. Focus on looking above all this. Don’t make it seem too much like you’re fascinated by how he sees things. 

“I’m beginning to understand your point,” he responds.

“Good!” Ferdinand says, a little too loud but his smile genuine. All frustration is gone from his voice now, and his movements as elegant and fluid as if he was still dancing. “You don’t have to think about anything but each other. I find that after a while I stop even listening to the music, and all that is left is sensation. Just being enveloped in the feeling of it all.”

He laughs again, his attention going up the large chandelier above them. It’s still mostly intact, only covered with dust and absent of a few dangling glass bits. All Hubert sees on it are cobwebs, but he knows Ferdinand is imagining the decorated ballroom full of ballgowns and suits of their youth. Those were times of living in excess, Hubert tells himself, as much as Ferdinand’s nostalgia rubs off on him. 

“Or maybe it is not feeling like you are the only two people in the world but rather that you can feel the whole world. And everyone is dancing around you, and. The ballgowns always look so pretty, like an oil painting, and—do you remember? Going to the balls when we were children?”

Hubert does remember. He never much liked going. The number of people was always stifling, and his father quizzed him on personal details about any passing noble. That family head was having an affair, this matriarch was one foot in the grave, that child is actually a bastard. And then, there was always the fear of an attempt on Edelgard’s life. He doesn’t remember much of the balls before his mother died, of course. 

He only nods anyways, and Ferdinand goes on. 

“Sometimes, when you dance, it feels like. Like you can just melt away into the music. Into the painting you become a part of. Or—like it’s all some grand opera, and you are an ensemble member, but you never needed to memorize the lines or the steps or anything. Like you are just an instrument in an orchestra, and you do not need to know what you are playing, because the crescendos rises and falls to do it all for you.” 

Ferdinand lowers his arms as if he had been casting an illusion spell on the whole room for himself. He turns back to Hubert, returns to his chair and his awkward grip on the back of it. 

“It might sound silly but I was hoping that I would be able to share that feeling with you.”

Hubert swallows and tries to ignore the feeling of his heart pounding. His hands have tightened where he’s crossed his arms, gripping his elbows. No. No, no, no, no. He doesn’t think he wants this. He would rather be a cog in the machine, be somewhere in the back of that oil painting, off to the side, in the shadows. Not in the middle, not part of the dance. He looks at his own lap, his head slumped over, and his heart pushes blood around his body, his head to his toes.

He wants that.

He wants to share that feeling with him as well. 

He doesn’t say anything. What is he supposed to say? Is that something he can possibly voice aloud? He both does and doesn’t want to tell Ferdinand all of it. About the townhouse, about the cooking, about calling off the marriage. About dancing. 

He finds that he cannot say any of it, though, and the silence draws on louder than the musicians could ever have played.

Ferdinand laughs again, awkwardly. He’s always so willing to fill the silence and Hubert almost wants to thank him for it. “Here I go, monologuing on again. That is why I do not see it like a math problem, though. I do think there is some sort of beauty in math, but what I am attempting to describe, I think it is different. There is no answer, no perfect way of accomplishing it. It is only a feeling.” 

That, Hubert can respond to. “Stop apologizing. I said it yesterday, and I will say it again. The monologuing is—not something I will persecute you for.” The words come out awkwardly, imperfect, unlike Ferdinand’s.

What would it feel like to give in to a feeling? All of Hubert’s life, he’s strived for the most brutal sort of perfection. When he killed someone, he always knew precisely how to do it, where to hit, where to cut, where to tear. How long it would take the poison to take effect. What was just a feeling? Back when he first was teaching himself Reason, he remembers being amazed at the sensation of it, but in the years since, once again it’s become only calculation. He wants to feel that— _feeling_ Ferdinand describes.

Ferdinand laughs at him, again, relieving tension seemingly without ever being aware of it. “I will remember that. I shall monologue whenever I want.” 

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Hubert says, letting out a laugh himself. Then he stands up and discovers that the movement puts him far more at ease. Sitting has always felt quite awkward for him. Less ability to run or attack if need be. 

“I have been putting some thought into your birthday tomorrow,” Ferdinand says and as desperately as this conversation was in need of a segway, Hubert grimaces.

“Please don’t.”

“But it is your birthday!” Ferdinand exclaims.

“I don’t see why that’s important to anyone.” 

“Maybe because we care about you?”

Revolting, Hubert thinks. Then, a suspicion grows in his chest. “You haven’t been conspiring with Edelgard, have you?”

“Oh, goddess, no, should I be?” Ferdinand asks, quickly enough it runs together like one word.

“No, no, no.” Hubert brings a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. 

“We could set up something fantastic. Twenty-nine, right?” 

“Don’t remind me.” 

“Why be so sour about it?” 

“What is it you want to do? Invite everyone to the castle and have a big party? I’d rather set a gambit on myself.” Hubert imagined this lavish ballroom filled with wasteful streamers and the smiling faces of his so-called friends, all with their attention turned on him. And cake. The thought alone almost makes him sick. 

“Well, that could be fun,” Ferdinand says, upbeat as ever. “What were you going to do? Stew in your room all day and avoid everyone?”

 _No,_ Hubert thinks. Though that would be relaxing. if not for the torture of his own thoughts. “I just want it to be a normal day, like any other. No birthday anything.” He squints his eyes at Ferdinand suspiciously. “And _no_ surprises.”

Ferdinand laughs gleefully. Too gleefully. Where did that man find all his glee? “Of course not, no surprises. You know you cannot avoid it entirely, though. We will have lessons.” 

“You better not have something embarrassing planned for me.”

“Nothing of the sort!”

* * *

The rest of the day goes on without a hitch. They practice table manners more at dinner, which is thankfully mostly fish. After lessons, Hubert bathes efficiently, not letting his mind water past the feeling of the water warm around his body and the sensation of his washcloth on his skin. 

The degree to which he doesn’t think of Ferdinand only makes him think about Ferdinand more.

He was supposed to think about whether he may be attracted to men, Dorothea had told him he should. Think about various activities he’d want to do with a romantic partner. Whether he would want to kiss a man, touch a man, hold hands with a man. In his own interpretation, whether he might lie with a man, what sex acts he might like to do. 

Dorothea hadn’t told him to think about whether he wants to do all those things with Ferdinand specifically, and yet, here he is, laying in bed in the same position as he was only a handful of hours earlier, thinking about exactly that.

He’s not a person without wants. He’s wanted many things in this life. He had wanted to rid this world of his sorry excuse of a father, and he’d succeeded at that. He wants to see the rise of a new Fodlan led by the Empire, rid of false idols and imperfect hierarchies. He wants to follow Edelgard’s vision, to serve her in every way he’s able. 

There are many things that he wants and has wanted, but that desire never stemmed from another person. There was Edelgard, of course, but as far as he is concerned, her desires already are his, so she doesn’t count. There are people he begrudgingly enjoys. Friends he’s made. But he hasn’t fallen in love with anyone before, hasn’t ever felt a stirring arousal for any person in particular. He’d been a healthy pubescent boy at some point, of course, but his past lust was never directed at any person or even any vague idea of body parts. Maybe the vague notion of the touch of skin against skin at most. Whenever he’s masturbated in the past, it’s always been somewhat perfunctory, merely accomplishing a function. But now, in his bed late at night, his mind wanders to uncharted territories, territories with orange hair and shining eyes. 

He keeps his hands still against his pajama-clad sides where he lies under the blankets, but the fact that he wants to touch himself is sign enough.

Perhaps he is gay.

Or, at least, his attraction to Ferdinand is...factual. 

He doesn’t know which of these realizations should shock him more. 

The concept of being attracted to men wasn’t an uncomfortable one to Hubert. What was more distasteful about it was defining himself. He was under the notion that he was, to some degree, free from the particular mortal coil of romance. He’d always been glad to never “crush” on anyone in their schooldays. It had all seemed more complicated that Hubert was interested in involving himself in. The distraction wasn’t worth the war, not worth his and Edelgard’s dream. He’d taken pride that he was so dedicated to his work that he eluded the siren call that drove others to behave like fools. So, the very idea of being attracted to anyone at all made him want to toss and turn, regardless of gender. 

But he wasn’t attracted to just anyone, and he wasn’t attracted to just any one man. He was attracted to Ferdinand von Aegir specifically. 

The prospect isn’t that strange. Ferdinand was, admittedly, both objectively and subjectively, an attractive man. Hubert has seen him grow over the years—from a snotty-nosed young noble, to a pompous and ignorant teenager, to a disillusioned and broken soldier, to the man he is today. And maybe that man isn’t such a bad one to fall in love with. 

Hubert brings his hand to his face in the dark of his room. No, he was trying to think of downsides to this, not upsides. Ferdinand was a perfectly fine person to fall in love with, but it was _Ferdinand_. While he’s become less annoying over the years, and recently been more of a comfortable, witty partner in daily badinage, and while he could spend the whole day with Ferdinand and yet never feel bored, even if he claims to… no, no, he was trying to think of a downside.

Maybe he shouldn’t have had that final cup of coffee at dinner. His body has grown so used to his late work hours that his right wrist aches for the action of writing.

He turns over again. Most of the people around him have dealt with crushes at some point or another. To most people, it was a quintessential part of adolescence. He should have paid more attention to those childhood crushes back in the height of their fire. He’d always written it off as below him, forgoing the wealth of blackmail information at his fingertips out of pure distaste. He tries to think of the crushes he knew about that he could draw upon for knowledge now. He would rather pull his own teeth out than contact Lorenz about anything vaguely romantic, and he’d never had much luck in his attempted conquests anyways. Sylvain was long dead. He’d killed the Kingdom archer boy himself. Ignatz, he thinks. Ignatz was alive and in the Alliance, and while Hubert didn’t know his whereabouts, he had contacted Bernadetta somewhat recently so—

Well, there was Bernadetta.

He sits up in his bed and can feel that tremor in his hand begging him to do work at this hour. 

Bernadetta had had a crush on him once. The occasion on which she’d revealed it to him was nothing more than a distant memory, but a memory nonetheless. At the beginning of those five years of the war, her hands wringing at her skirts. They were here in Enbarr, then, not having moved headquarters to Garreg Mach yet. The castle, recently vacated, had more than enough rooms for all of them. She had wanted to call him out to the gazebo, but was so anxious she had been unable to leave her room in the end. So they’d had the conversation right there instead. Her words had been garbled and messy, the situation so uncomfortable that Hubert had attempted to block it out of his memory entirely. He hadn’t known what to say to her, not when she had blurted, _”I think I might have a teeny-weeny crush on you, but, I, uh, it’s not a big deal! And I think I’m getting over it! It just feels dishonest when I don’t tell you and sometimes when you look at me, I swear to the Goddess it’s like you have me all figured out and that’s really, really stressful and please don’t say anything, I just wanted to let you know and I am so sorry!”_

Their friendship had recovered, and years later she had told him she’d long gotten over it. She had said her childish crush was fueled by teenage hormones and a newfound love for the outside world and the friends around her. He remembers the night she told him she had gotten over her crush far better than he remembers the night she told him about her crush in the first place. They had been sitting on a bench together in Garreg Mach in the height of the war. The moon had hung in the sky, a chill in the air as winter reintroduced herself. He remembers being so, so happy then, that their friendship wouldn’t change. That there would be no breakup, no inevitable marriage, no anything, and that they could continue to be friends without fault. Her admittance that the old crush was ungrounded in the first place and had bled away since had relieved him of something he had forgotten was weighing on his chest, and yet he still felt lighter with the relief.

But, it had been there once. She had “crushed on” him, to speak colloquially.

He’s sleepless and jittery in a way that can only be solved by productivity, and he lets that urge lead him to his desk in the dark. Better to give in to the urge to write than any of his more base urges. He uses a fire spell to set the wick of his candle there alight, and the small flame illuminates a section of the room around him. 

He brings out a scrap of paper and a spare pen before rethinking it. Ferdinand had spent hours the previous day drilling into his head the proper ways to write a letter, so he may as well practice it. 

According to Ferdinand, _for paper, no color is more elegant than white, and a gentleman should use no other._ He’d said that some nobles, more commonly ladies, would use tinted and perfumed papers, but even that fashion was going out of style. He’d also said that Hubert needed to stop using his black-bordered paper, since apparently, that was “mourning paper” and always gave people the wrong idea. Hubert quite likes that so-called wrong idea, but Bernadetta will be nervous enough as is receiving an unexpected letter from him, so instead he picks a piece of pale and delicately pressed paper.

Black ink was acceptable for Ferdinand’s gentlemanly letters, though, so he uses his typical inkwell. He straightens his back, now that he’s practicing his lessons anyways, though the irony is not lost on him that he’s writing a gentlemanly letter in his pajamas at eleven at night.

 _Dearest friend,_ he writes. That was the address he and Ferdinand agreed on liking the most. Perhaps that was only because they had been only a hair’s breadth away when discussing, and the words “dearest friend” had felt so natural when talking to Ferdinand. Still, it does not feel entirely unfitting to call Bernadetta such. 

Proper letters, according to Ferdinand, always began with an apology. Some sort of unwritten rule. Hubert didn’t even try to understand it, but the ink freely flows from his quill.

 _Pardon the strangeness of this favor,_ yes, yes, letters were always referred to as “favors”... _but I find myself seeking your counsel alone in this strange and tumultuous hour of my mind. I take my pen in hand not to answer questions as I usually do, but rather to ask them._

_Do you yet recall all those years ago, when you spoke to me of your old affections for me?_

_I am now haunted by my own thoughts, impressions of affections towards unexpected but not unwelcome places._ The smile on his face surprises him. Pretending to talk like Ferdinand in letters was fun, fun enough that he can ignore his embarrassment at writing it at all. _The lessons I spoke of to you have taken a turn towards a direction I do not know how to follow. I fear, throughout the past few weeks, I have begun to_ He takes a breath, and forges on. _feel such affection for my teacher. (Not Byleth. Ferdinand. You know what I’m talking about) I will not wax on to you about why or how I feel such a way for him, as the thought makes me want to pluck my eyes out like Faerghus’s late king,_ Oh, that was good. _but I do. My growing fondness has begun to pose issues in my ability to accomplish what the day-to-day lessons need of me._

_So, I contact you for counsel and advice. If you might describe it to me, what does a “crush” feel like? Is a “crush” worth throwing away other possible romantic endeavors? Can you imagine me—for all I am—experiencing something like a “crush”?_

_Do not rush to return_ Was he supposed to say favor again? Well, returning a favor just sounded awkward. He crosses the line out. _Take your time in your reply but know I am suffering in my own unwanted emotions on the other side of this pen._

Now, to sign it off. _With sincere regards,  
Hubert von Vestra._

Perfect. He folds the letter off with practiced efficiency and slides it into an envelope from his box. The process of dripping wax onto the back of the note and sealing it comes to him like a second nature. 

He’ll send it in the morning. Something entirely natural, to keep his mind off his birthday. Bernadetta always had some good advice, if you could wait long enough to get it out of her. And even if she didn’t, she’d want to hear about everything happening in his life. He would hold off on doing anything without her word first, as she was far more well-versed in these matters. He’s found the romance novels she has secretly penned, tucked away in the forgotten nooks of her house. The message Bertram sent back to the Alliance about the future of the marriage will depend on her good judgment—not that he’d tell her that, as he’s hoping for a response sooner rather than later and she deals poorly with pressure. After all, it’s not like anything of importance could happen before her reply got back to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed that! there's still a lot of slow burning ahead. i'm really excited for what i have planned in the next chapter...
> 
> while writing this i realized that it could come off as a "gay only for you" sort of narrative, so i wanted to clarify down here that, for this fic, i interpret hubert as demisexual and that's what's up. there's no great way of putting that in the text, so i just thought i'd say that here! 
> 
> so, in the past, i tried to have a draft of the next chapter finished before i posted a chapter. i'm obviously not doing that anymore, so my updates might be more spaced out. hopefully nothing like this, but once a week just isn't realistic any more with my chapter length (and hopefully if the job i'm interviewing for accepts me!!). 
> 
> i do post snippets/ficlets on twitter sometimes though! since i updated the last chapter, here are some threads:  
> [horny ferdibert letters for wankweek](https://twitter.com/lawfulboi/status/1289764804475777025?s=20) (soon to come to ao3 maybe!)  
> [various au drabbles from ferdibert week](https://twitter.com/lawfulboi/status/1292614639390461954?s=20)  
> [hubert gets turned into a cat drabbles](https://twitter.com/lawfulboi/status/1292614639390461954?s=20>au%20drabbles%20for%20ferdibert%20week</a>%0A<a%20href=) (in progress!)  
> i find that posting unedited snippets on twitter is a lot less stressful than posting things on ao3, so if you want to see more like that, check out my twitter! i'll also hopefully open a curious cat as well if anyone has any questions they want to ask about this fic but don't want to post in the comments!
> 
> sorry about the long notes! unsurprisingly, i can get wordy. comments are always appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> Please come chat with me on Twitter [@lawfulboi.](https://twitter.com/lawfulboi) I have so much in store for you.


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